•NRLF 


GIFT  OF 

uLuw  of   l<?00 


A  Whirl  Asunder 


BY  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  DOOMSWOMAN  "  AND  "  BBFORB 

THE  GRINGO   CAMB." 


WITH    FRONTISPIECE   BY 

E.  FREDERICK 


•flew  t?orfc  attt  lonton 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1895,  by 

FREDERICK  A,  STOKES  COMPANY. 
All  rights  reserved. 


A  WHIRL  ASUNDER. 


CHAPTER  I. 

As  the  train  stopped  for  the  sixth 
time,  Clive  descended  abruptly. 

"  I  think  I'll  walk  the  rest  of  the 
way,"  he  said  to  the  conductor. 
"  Just  look  after  my  portmanteau, 
will  you  ?  and  see  that  it  is  left  at 
Yorba  with  my  boxes." 

"  O.  K.  ",  said  the  man.  "  But 
you  must  like  walking." 

Clive  had  spent  seven  days  on  the 
ocean,  three  in  the  furious  energy 
of  New  York,  and  six  on  a  transcon 
tinental  train,  whose  discomforts 
made  him  wonder  if  he  had  a  moral 


4  H  TKHbitl  2teuiroer» 

right  to  enter  the  embarrassing 
state  of  matrimony  with  a  temper 
hopelessly  soured.  As  he  had  come 
to  California  to  marry,  and  as  his 
betrothed  was  at  a  hotel  in  the 
northern  redwoods,  he  did  not 
pause  for  rest  in  San  Francisco  ; 
he  left,  two  hours  after  his  arrival, 
on  a  narrow  guage  train,  which 
clashed  down  precipitous  mountain 
slopes,  shot,  rocking  from  side  to 
side,  about  curves  on  a  road  so  nar 
row  that  the  brush  scraped  the  win 
dows,  or  the  eye  looked  down^-into 
the  blackness  of  a  canon,  five  hun 
dred  feet  below  ;  raced  shrieking 
across  trestles  which  seemed  to  swing 
midway  between  heaven  and  earth  ; 
only  to  slacken,  with  protesting 
snort  and  jerk,  when  climbing  to 
some  dizzier  height.  Clive  had 
stood  for  an  hour  on  the  platform, 
fascinated  by  the  danger  and  the 
bleak  solemnity  of  the  forests, 


a  TKUbfrl  asun&er,  5 

whose  rigid  trunks  and  short  stiffly 
pointed  arms  looked  as  if  they  had 
not  quivered  since  time  began.  But 
he  felt  that  he  had  had  enough, 
moreover  that  he  had  not  drawn  an 
uncompanioned  breath  since  he 
left  England.  If  he  was  not  pos 
sessed  by  the  graceful  impatience  of 
the  lover,  he  reminded  himself  that 
he  was  tired  and  nervous,  and  had 
been  obliged  to  go  dirty  for  six  days, 
enough  to  knock  the  romance  out 
of  any  man  ;  the  ubiquitous  human 
animal  had  talked  incessantly  for 
sixteen  days,  and  his  legs  ached  for 
want  of  stretching. 

A  twisted  old  man  with  a  sharp 
eye,  a  rusty  beard  depending  aim 
lessly  from  a  thin  tobacco-stained 
mouth,  limped  across  the  platform, 
rolling  a  flag.  Clive  asked  him  if 
he  could  get  to  the  Yorba  hotel  on 
foot. 

The  man  stared.     "  Well,  you  be 


6  21  "QOlbtrl  Hsunfcer, 

an  Englishman,  /  guess,"  he  re 
marked. 

"  Yes,  I  am  an  Englishman,"  said 
Clive  haughtily. 

"  Oh,  no  offence,  but  the  way  you 
English  do  walk  beats  us.  We  ain't 
none  too  fond  of  walkin'  in  Californy. 
Too  many  mountains,  I  guess.  Yes, 
you  kin  walk  it,  and  I  guess  you'll 
have  to.  There  goes  your  train. 
Stranger  in  these  parts?  " 

"  I  arrived  in  California  to-day." 

"  So.  Coin'  to  raise  cattle,  or 
just  seein'  the  wonders  of  the  Gold 
State  ?" 

"  Will  you  kindly  point  out 
the  way  ?  And  I  should  like  to 
send  a  dispatch  to  the  hotel,  if  pos 
sible." 

"Oh,  suttenly.  We  don't  think 
much  of  English  manners  in  these 
parts,  I  don't  mind  sayin'.  You 
English  act  as  if  you  owned  God 
Almighty  when  you  come  out  here. 


H  TOlbirl  Bsunfcer.  7 

You  forget  we  licked  ye  twice. 
Come  after  a  Californy  heiress  ?  " 

Clive  felt  an  impulse  to  throw  the 
man  over  the  trestle,  then  laughed. 
"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said,  "  I 
am  sorry  my  manners  are  bad  but 
the  truth  is  my  head  is  tired  and  my 
legs  are  not.  Come,  show  me  the 
way." 

Being  further  molified  by  a  silver 
dollar,  the  old  man  replied  gra 
ciously,  "  All  right,  sir.  Just  amuse 
yourself  while  I  send  your  telegram, 
and  fetch  a  dark  lantern.  You'll 
need  it.  The  moon's  doin'  well,  but 
the  tops  of  them  redwoods  knit  to 
gether,  and  are  as  close  as  a  roof." 

Clive  walked  idly  about  the  little 
waiting-room.  The  walls  were  dec 
orated  with  illustrated  weekly  news 
papers,  and  the  gratuitous  litho 
graph.  John  L.  Sullivan,  looking, 
under  the  softening  influence  of  the 
weekly  artist,  as  if  sculptured  from 


8  a  TKttbitl  Hsunfcer. 

mush,  glowered  across  at  Corbett, 
who  displayed  his  muscles  in  a  dan 
dified  attitude.  There  were  also 
several  lithographs  of  pretty,  rather 
elegant-looking  girls.  Clive  no 
ticed  that  one  had  a  rude  frame  of 
young  redwood  branches  about  it, 
and  occupied  the  post  of  honor  at 
the  head  of  the  room.  He  walked 
over  and  examined  it  as  well  as  he 
could  by  the  light  of  the  smoking 
lamp. 

The  head  was  in  profile,  severe  in 
outline,  as  classic  as  the  modern 
head  ever  is.  The  chin  was  lifted 
proudly,  the  nostrils  looked  capable 
of  expansion.  The  brow  and  eyes 
suggested  intellect,  the  lower  part 
of  the  face  pride  and  self-will  and 
passion,  perhaps  undeveloped  cru 
elty  and  sensuality. 

"  Who  is  Miss  Belmont  ? "  he 
asked,  as  the  station  agent  left  the 
telegraph  table. 


a  Wbirl  BeunOet.  9 

"  Oh,  she's  one  of  the  heiresses. 
That's  our  high-toned  society  paper. 
It's  printin'  a  series  of  Californy 
heiresses.  One  of  the  other  papers 
says  as  how  it's  a  good  guide  book 
for  impecoonious  furriners,  and  I 
guess  that's  about  the  size  of  it. 
She's  got  a  million,  and  nobody  but 
an  aunt,  and  she  has  her  own  way,  I 
_tell — you.  She'll  be  a  handful  to 
manage ;  but  somehow,  although 
she  keeps  people  talkin',  they  don't 
believe  as  much  harm  of  her  as  of 
some  that's  more  quiet.  You'll 
meet  her,  I  guess,  if  you're  goin'  to 
stay  at  Yorba,  for  she's  got  a  big 
house  in  the  redwoods  and  knows  a 
lot  of  the  hotel  folks  and  the  Bohe 
mian  Club  fellers.  I  like  her.  She 
rides  this  way  once  a  year  or  so, 
and  we  have  a  good  chin  about 
politics.  She  knows  a  thing  or 
two,  you  bet,  and  she  believes  in 
Grover." 


io  a  laabtrt 

"  How  old  is  she  ?  And  why 
doesn't  she  marry  ? "  asked  Clive 
idly,  as  they  walked  up  the  road. 

"  She's  twenty-six,  and  she's  goin' 
to  marry — a  Noo  York  feller  ;  one 
of  them  with  Dutch  names.  She's 
had  offers,  /guess.  Three  of  your 
lords,  I  know  of.  But  lords  don't 
stand  much  show  with  Californy 
girls — them  as  was  raised  here,  any 
how.  They  don't  give  a  damn  for 
titles,  and  they  scent  a  fortune-hun 
ter  before  he's  off  the  dock. 
They've  put  their  heads  together 
and  talked  him  over  before  he's 
registered.  This  Dutchman's  got 
money,  so  I  guess  he's  all  right.  Be 
you  a  lord  ?  " 

"  I  am  not.  I  am  a  barrister,  and 
the  son  of  a  barrister." 

"  What  may  that  be  ?" 

"  I  believe  you  call  it  lawyer  out 
here." 

"  O — h — h — a  lawyer's  a  gay  bird, 


a  cQbtrl  HsunDcr.  u 

ain't  he  ?  And  don't  he  have  a  good 
time?"  The  old  man  chuckled. 

"I  never  found  them  different 
from  other  men.  What  do  you 
mean  ?" 

"  Ours  are  rippers.  I've  been  in 
Californy  since  '49,  and  I  could  spin 
some  yarns  that  would  make  your 
hair  curl,  young  man.  Lord,  Lord, 
the  old  ones  were  tough.  The 
young  ones  ain't  quite  so  bad,  but 
they're  doing  their  best." 

"  California  is  rather  a  wild  place, 
isn't  it  ?" 

"  It  was.  It's  quietin'  down  now, 
and  it  ain't  near  so  interestin'.  Jack 
Belmont,  that  there  young  lady's 
father,  was  a  lawyer  when  he  fust 
come  here,  but  he  struck  it  rich  in 
Con.  Virginia,  in  '74,  and  after  that 
warn't  he  a  ripper.  Oh,  Lord  !  He 
was  a  terror.  But  he  done  his  dooty 
by  his  girl  ;  had  her  eddicated  in 
Paris  and  Noo  York,  and  never  let  no 


12  B  Wbitl  Baunter. 

one  cross  her.  He  wasasfine-lookin' 
a  man  as  ever  I  seen,  almost  as  tall 
and  clean  made  as  you  be,  and  awful 
open-handed  and  popular,  although 
a  terrible  enemy.  He's  shot  his  man 
twice  over,  they  say,  and  I  believe 
it.  His  wife  died  ten  years  before 
him.  She  was  fond  of  him,  too, 
poor  thing,  and  he  made  no  bones 
about  bein'  unfaithful  to  her — they 
don't  out  here.  A  man's  no  good  if 
you  can't  tell  a  yarn  or  two  about 
him.  Well,  Jack  Belmont  died  five 
years  ago,  and  left  about  a  million 
dollars  to  his  girl.  He'd  had  a  long 
sight  more,  but  she  was  lucky  to  git 
that.  They  say  as  how  she  was 
awful  broke  up  when  he  died." 

"  You're  a  regular  old  chronique 
scandaleuse"  said  Clive,  much  inter 
ested.  "  What  sort  of  a  social  posi 
tion  has  this  Miss  Belmont  ?  Is  she 
received  ? " 

"  Received  ?      Glory,    man — why 


a  TOlbirl  :asunfcer.  13 

her  father  was  a  Southern  gent — 
Maryland,  as  I  remember,  and  her 
mother  was  from  Boston.  They  led 
society  here  in  the  sixties  ;  they're 
one  of  the  old  families  of  Californy. 
That's  the  reason  Miss  Belmont 
does  as  she  damned  pleases,  and 
nobody  dares  say  boo — that  and  the 
million.  She's  ancient  aristocracy, 
she  is.  Received  !  Oh,  Lord  !  " 

Clive,  much  amused,  asked, 
"  What  does  she  do  that  is  so  dread 
ful?" 

"  Oh,  she's  been  engaged  fifteen 
times ;  she  rides  about  the  coun 
try  in  boy's  clothes,  and  sits  up  all 
night  under  the  trees  at  Del 
Monte  talkin'  to  a  man,  or  gives  all 
her  dances  to  one  man  at  a  party, 
and  then  cuts  him  the  next  day  on 
the  street ;  and  when  she  gits  tired 
of  people,  comes  up  here  without 
even  her  aunt.  She  used  to  run  to 
fires,  but  she  give  that  up  some 


14          B  TIGlbtrl  Hsun&er. 

years  ago.  She  travels  about  the 
country  for  weeks  without  a  chap 
eron,  and  once  went  camping  alone 
with  five  men.  Sometimes  she'll  fill 
her  house  up  with  men  for  a  week, 
and  not  have  no  other  woman,  savin' 
her  aunt.  Lately  she's  more  quiet, 
they  say,  and  has  become  a  terrible 
reader.  Last  winter  she  stayed  up 
here  for  three  months  alone.  I 
hear  as  how  people  talked.  But  I 
didn't  see  nothin'.  She's  all  right, 
or  my  name  ain't  Jo  Bagley.  Well, 
here  you  are,  sir.  Good  luck  to  ye  ! 
Keep  to  the  road  and  don't  strike  off 
on  any  of  them  side  trails,  and  you 
can't  go  wrong.  Evenin'.  " 

Clive  went  into  the  dark  forest. 
What  the  old  man  had  told  him  of 
Miss  Belmont  had  quickened  his 
imagination,  and  he  speculated 
about  her  for  some  moments  ;  then 
his  thoughts  wandered  to  his  Eng 
lish  betrothed.  He  had  not  seen 


a  TKlbirl  SsunDer*  15 

her  for  two  years.  Her  mother's 
health  failing,  her  father  had  taken 
his  family  to  Southern  California. 
A  year  later  Mrs.  Gordon  had  died, 
and  her  husband  having  bought  a 
ranch  in  which  he  was  much  inter 
ested,  had  written  to  Clive  that  he 
wanted  his  eldest  daughter  for 
another  year  ;  by  that  time  her  sis 
ter  would  have  finished  school,  and 
could  take  her  place  as  head  of  the 
household.  Lately  he  and  Mary  had 
felt  the  debilitating  influence  of  the 
southern  climate  and  had  gone  to 
the  redwoods  of  the  north.  There 
Clive  was  to  meet  them,  remain  a  few 
weeks,  then  marry  in  San  Francisco 
and  take  his  wife  back  to  England. 
Clive  was  thirty-four,  ten  years 
older  than  Mary  Gordon.  He  re 
called  the  day  he  had  proposed  to 
her.  She  had  come  down  the  steps 
of  her  father's  house,  in  a  blue  gown 
and  garden  hat,  and  they  had  gone 


16  a  IXUbirl  BsunDer. 

for  a  walk  in  the  woods.  She  was 
not  a  clever  woman,  and  she  had 
only  the  white  and  pink  and  brown, 
the  rounded  lines  of  youth,  no  posi 
tive  beauty  of  face  or  figure  ;  but 
with  the  blind  instinct  of  his  race  he 
had  turned  almost  automatically  to 
the  type  of  woman  who,  time  out  of 
mind,  has  produced  the  strong- 
limbed,  strong-brained  men  that 
have  made  a  nation  insolently  great. 
She  reminded  him  of  his  mother, 
with  her  even  sweetness  of  nature, 
her  sympathy,  her  large  maternal 
suggestion.  He  had  known  her 
since  her  early  girlhood  and  grown 
fonder  of  her  each  year.  She  rested 
him,  and  had  the  divine  feminine 
faculty  of  making  him  feel  a  better 
and  cleverer  man  than  he  was  in 
the  habit  of  thinking  himself  else 
where. 

She  had  accepted  him   with   the 
sweetest  smile   he   had   ever  seen, 


B  TOlbirl  asimfcer*  17 

and  he  had  wondered  If  other  men 
were  as  fortunate.  For  two  years 
he  saw  much  of  her,  then  she  went 
to  America,  and  he  had  plunged 
into  his  work  and  his  man's  life,  not 
missing  her  as  consistently  as  he 
had  expected,  but  caring  for  her 
none  the  less.  The  Saturday  mail 
brought  him,  unintermittingly,  a 
letter  eight  pages  long,  neatly  writ 
ten,  and  describing  in  detail  the 
daily  life  of  her  family,  and  of  the 
strange  people  about  them.  They 
were  calm,  affectionate,  interesting 
letters,  which  Clive  enjoyed,  and  to 
which  he  replied  with  a.  hurried 
scrawl,  rarely  covering  more  than 
one  page.  An  Englishwoman  does 
not  expect  much,  but  Mary  occa 
sionally  hinted  sadly  that  a  longer 
letter  would  make  her  happier ; 
whereupon  his  conscience  hurt  him 
and  he  wrote  her  two  pages. 

He  enjoyed  these  two  years,  des- 


i8  8  TKHbirl  Ssimfcer. 

pite  hard  work  ;  he  was  popular 
with  men  and  women,  and  much 
was  popular  with  him  that  adds  to 
the  keener  pleasures  of  life.  When 
the  time  came  to  pack  his  boxes  and 
go  to  America  he  puffed  a  large 
regretful  rack  from  his  last  pipe  of 
freedom  ;  but  it  did  not  occur  to 
him  to  ask  release.  For  the  mat 
ter  of  that,  although  he  had  come 
to  regard  Mary  Gordon  as  the  in 
evitable  rather  than  the  desired, 
he  had  felt  for  her  the  strong  ten 
derness  which  such  men  feel  for 
such  women,  which  endures,  and 
never  in  any  circumstance  turns  to 
hate. 

After  a  time  Clive  extinguished 
the  lantern  :  it  illumined  the  road 
fitfully,  but  accentuated  the  dense 
blackness  of  the  forest.  The  under 
growth  was  too  thick  to  permit  him 
to  stray  aside,  and  he  wanted  to 
form  some  idea  of  his  surroundings. 


B  THHbirl  SsunDer.  19 

His  eyes  accustomed  themselves  to 
the  dark.  Moon  rays  splashed  or 
trickled  here  and  there  through 
lofty  cleft  and  mesh.  Clive  paused 
once  and  looked  up.  The  straight 
trees,  sometimes  slender,  sometimes 
huge,  were  as  inflexible  as  granite, 
an  unbroken  column  for  a  hundred 
feet  or  more  ;  then  thrusting  out 
rigid  arms  from  a  tapering  trunk 
into  another  hundred  feet  of  space. 
The  effect  was  that  of  a  dense  forest 
suspended  in  air,  supported  above 
the  low  brush  forest  on  a  vast  irreg 
ular  colonnade,  out  of  whose  ruins 
it  might  have  sprung.  Clive  had 
never  known  a  stillness  so  profound, 
a  repose  so  absolute.  But  it  was 
not  the  peaceful  repose  of  an  Eng 
lish  wood.  It  suggested  the  heavy 
brooding  stillness  of  archaic  days, 
when  the  uneasy  world  drowsed 
before  another  convulsion.  There 
was  some  other  influence  abroad  in 


20          a  TKUbfrl 

the  woods,  but  at  the  time  its  mean 
ing  eluded  him. 

Suddenly  it  occurred  to  him  that 
he  could  not  see  Mary  Gordon  in 
this  forest.  There  was  an  irritating- 
incongruity  in  the  very  thought. 
She  belonged  to  the  sweet  calm 
beech  woods,  of  England  ;  nothing 
in  her  was  in  consonance  with  the 
storm  and  stress,  the  passion  and 
fatality  which  this  strange  country 
suggested.  Did  the  women  of  Cali 
fornia  fit  their  frame  ?  He  experi 
enced  a  strong  desire  for  the  com 
panionship  of  a  woman  who  would 
interpret  this  forest  to  him,  then 
called  himself  an  ass  and  strode  on. 

An  hour  later  he  became  aware 
of  a  distant  and  deep  murmur.  It 
was  crossed  suddenly  by  a  wild, 
hilarious  yell.  Clive  relit  the  lan 
tern  and  flashed  it  along  the  brush 
at  his  right.  Presently  he  came 
upon  a  narrow  trail.  The  prospect 


B  TKlbtrl  BsunDer.  21 

of  adventure  after  sixteen  days  of 
civilized  monotony  lured  him  aside, 
and  he  walked  rapidly  down  the  by 
path.  In  a  few  moments  he  found 
himself  on  the  edge  of  a  large  clear 
ing.  The  moon  poured  in  without 
let,  and  revealed  a  scene  of  singu 
lar  and  uncomfortable  suggestion. 

In  the  middle  of  the  space  was  a 
huge  funeral  pyre  ;  beyond  it,  evi 
dently  on  a  bier,  Clive  could  see  the 
stony,  upturned  feet  of  a  mammoth 
corpse,  lightly  covered  with  a  white 
pall.  Between  the  pyre  and  the 
trees  nearer  him  a  large  caldron 
swung  over  a  heap  of  fagots,  which 
were  beginning  to  crackle  gently. 
The  place  looked  as  if  about  to  be 
the  scene  of  some  awful  rite.  Eng 
lishmen  are  willing  to  believe  any 
thing  about  California,  and  Clive, 
who  had  commanded  the  admiration 
of  his  father's  colleagues  with  his 
clear,  quick,  logical  brain,  leaped  at 


22  a  "Qdbirl  BsunDer. 

once  to  the  conclusion  that  this  part 
of  California  was  still  the  hunting- 
ground  of  the  Red  Indian,  and  that 
some  mighty  chief  was  about  to  be 
cremated  ;  whilst  his  widow,  per 
chance,  sacrificed  herself  in  the  cal 
dron. 

He  plunged  his  hands  into  his 
pockets  and  awaited  developments 
with  the  nervous  delight  of  a 
schoolboy.  Although  the  forest 
was  silent  again,  he  had  an  uneasy 
sense  of  many  human  beings  at  no 
great  distance. 

He  had  not  long  to  wait.  There 
was  a  sudden  red  glare  which  made 
the  aisles  of  the  forest  seem  alive 
with  dancing  shapes,  hideously  con 
torted.  Simultaneously  there  arose 
a  low  soft  chanting,  monotonous 
and  musical,  bizarre  rather  than 
weird.  Then  out  of  the  recesses  on 
the  far  side  of  the  clearing,  start- 
lingly  defined  under  the  blaze  of 


a  TKHbirl  BsunDer.  23 

many  torches  held  aloft  in  the  back 
ground,  emerged  a  high  priest,  his 
crown  shaven,  his  beard  flowing 
to  his  waist,  his  white  robes  mark 
ing  the  austerity  of  his  order.  His 
hands  were  folded  on  his  breast,  his 
head  bowed.  Behind  him,  two  and 
two,  followed  twenty  acolytes, 
swinging  censers,  the  heavy  perfume 
of  the  incense  rising  to  the  pungent 
odor  of  the  redwoods,  blending 
harmoniously  :  the  lofty  forest 
aisles  were  become  those  of  some 
vas*  primeval  crypt. 

Then  illusion  was  in  a  measure 
dispelled.  The  two  hundred  torch- 
bearers  who  came  after  wore  the 
ordinary  outing  clothes  of  civiliza 
tion. 

The  strange  procession  marched 
slowly  round  the  circle,  passing 
perilously  close  to  Clive.  Then  the 
priest  and  acolytes  walked  solemnly 
up  to  the  caldron,  the  others  dis- 


24  a  tdbirl  asunder. 

parsing  themselves  irregularly,  leap 
ing  occasionally  and  waving  their 
torches.  The  fagots  were  blazing  ; 
Clive  fancied  he  heard  a  merry  bub 
bling.  A  moment  of  profound  si 
lence.  Then  the  priest  dropped 
something  into  the  caldron,  chant 
ing  an  invocation  of  which  Clive 
could  make  nothing,  although  he 
was  a  scholar  in  several  languages. 
The  acolytes  and  torch-bearers 
tossed  to  the  priest  entities  and  im 
aginations,  which  he  dropped  with 
much  ceremony  into  the  caldron, 
to  the  accompaniment  of  hollow, 
not  to  say  ribald  laughter,  and  jests 
which  had  a  strong  flavor  of  per 
sonalities. 

The  prologue  lasted  ten  minutes. 
Then  the  mummers  crowded  back 
ward  and  faced  the  pyre.  Again 
the  heavy  silence  fell.  The  priest 
went  forward,  and  raising  his  clasped 
hands  and  set  face  to  the  moon, 


H  TKHbtrl  BsunDer.  25 

stood,  for  a  moment,  like  a  statue 
on  a  monument,  then  turned  slowly 
and  beckoned.  The  acolytes  formed 
in  line  and  marched  with  solemn 
precision  to  the  other  side  of  the 
pyre.  A  moment  later  they  reap 
peared,  walking  with  halting  steps, 
their  heads  bowed,  chanting  dis 
mally.  On  their  shoulders  they 
carried  a  long  bier,  on  which,  appar 
ently,  lay  the  corpse  of  a  dead 
giant.  The  priest  sprinkled  the 
body,  then  turned  away  with  a  ges 
ture  of  loathing.  The  acolytes 
carried  it  by  the  torch-bearers,  who 
spat  upon  and  execrated  it ;  then 
slowly  and  laboriously  mounted  the 
pyre,  and  dropping  the  bier  on  its 
apex,  scampered  indecorously  down 
with  savage  grunts  of  satisfaction, 
their  white  garments  fluttering 
along  the  dark  pile  like  a  wash  on  a 
windy  day.  The  corpse  lay  long 
and  white  and  horrid  under  the 


26  a  "Cdbirl  BsunDet. 

beating  moon  and  the  flare  of  torch. 
As  the  acolytes  reached  the  ground 
the  rest  of  the  company  rushed 
simultaneously  forward,  and  with  a 
hideous  yell  flung  their  torches  at 
the  pyre.  There  was  the  hiss  of 
tar,  the  leap  of  one  great  flame,  an 
angry  crackling.  A  moment  more 
and  the  forest  would  be  more  vividly 
alight  than  it  had  ever  been  at 
noonday.  Clive,  feeling  as  uncom 
fortable  as  an  eavesdropper,  but 
too  fascinated  to  retreat,  stepped 
behind  a  large  redwood.  With  his 
eyes  still  fixed  on  the  strange  scene 
he  did  not  pick  his  steps,  and  com 
ing  suddenly  in  contact  with  a  pli 
able  body,  he  nearly  knocked  it  over. 
There  was  a  smothered  shriek,  fol 
lowed  by  a  suppressed  but  forcible 
vocative.  Clive  mechanically  lifted 
his  hat. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  he  said,  ad 
dressing  a  tall  lad,  whose  face   was 


B  Udbirl  BaunDer.  27 

partly  concealed  by  the  visor  of  a 
cap  ;  "  I  hope  I  have  not  hurt 
you." 

"  I  am  not  so  easily  hurt,"  said 
the  lad  haughtily. 

The  masculine  man  never  lived 
who  did  not  recognize  a  feminine 
woman  in  whatever  guise,  if  within 
the  radius  of  her  magnetism.  This 
young  masquerader  interested 
Clive  at  once.  Her  voice  had  a 
warm  huskiness.  The  mouth  and 
chin  were  classically  cut,  but  very 
human.  She  had  thrown  back  her 
head  and  revealed  a  round  beauti 
ful  throat.  The  loose  flannel  shirt 
and  jacket  concealed  her  figure,  but 
even  the  slight  motions  she  had 
made  revealed  energy  and  grace. 

Clive  offered  her  a  cigarette. 
She  accepted  it  and  smoked  daintily, 
withdrawing  as  much  as  possible 
into  the  shadow  and  shielding  her 
face  with  her  hand.  He  leaned  his 


28  B  TKHblrl  Bsun&er, 

back  against  the  tree  and  lit  a 
cigar. 

"  What  on  earth  is  the  meaning  of 
this  scene?"  he  asked. 

"  That  is  the  great  Midsummer 
Jinks  ceremony  of  the  Bohemian 
Club.  They  have  it  every  year,  and 
never  invite  outsiders.  So  I  was 
bound  I'd  see  it  anyhow." 

"  I  wonder  you  don't  become  a 
member." 

"  Oh,  I'm  too  young,"  promptly. 

"Tell  me  more  about  it.  What 
do  these  ceremonies  mean  ?" 

"  Oh,  they  put  all  sorts  of  things 
into  that  caldron — the  liver  of  a 
grasshopper  with  one  of  Harry 
Armstrong's  jokes ;  the  wasted 
paint  on  somebody's  last  picture  with 
the  misshapen  feet  of  somebody's 
else  latest  verse.  The  corpse  is  an 
effigy  of  Care,  and  they  are  cre 
mating  him.  Now  they'll  be  happy, 
that  is  to  say,  drunk,  till  morning, 


a  TKibfrl  aeun&er.  29 

for  Care  is  dead.  I'm  going  to  stop 
and  see  it  out." 

"  I  think  you  had  better  go 
home." 

"  Indeed  ?  "  Clive  saw  the  hand 
that  shielded  her  face  jerk. 

"  Did  you  ever  see,  or  rather  hear 
a  lot  of  men  on  a  lark  when 
they  fancied  that  no  women  were 
about  ? " 

"  No  ;  but  that  is  what  I  wish  to 
do." 

"Which  you  are  not  going  to  do 
to-night." 

There  was  a  sudden  snapping  of 
dry  leaves.  A  small  foot  had  come 
down  with  emphasis. 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  That  this  is  no  place  for  a 
woman,  and  that  you  must  go." 

"  I'm  not — well,  I  am,  and  I  don't 
care  in  the  least  whether  you  know 
it  or  not.  I  wish  you  to  understand, 
sir,  that  I  shall  stay  here,  and  that  I 


30  B  Mbirl  asun&er. 

am  not  in  the  habit  of  being  dic 
tated  to." 

"You  are  Miss  Belmont,  I  sup 
pose." 

An  instant's  pause.  Then  she 
replied  with  a  haughty  pluck  which 
delighted  him :  "  Yes,  I  am  Miss 
Belmont,  and  you  are  an  insolent 
Englishman." 

"  How  do  you  know  that  I  am  an 
Englishman  ? " 

"  Anyone  could  tell  from  your 
voice  and  your  overbearing  man 
ner." 

"Well,  I  am,"  said  Clive,  much 
amused. 

"I  detest  Englishmen." 

"  Smoke  a  little,  or  I  am  afraid 
you  will  cry." 

She  obeyed  with  unexpected  do 
cility,  but  in  a  moment  crushed  the 
coal  of  her  cigarette  on  a  damp 
tree  stump.  Then  she  turned  to 
him  and  folded  her  arms. 


a  Tldbirl  BsunDer.  31 

"  I  am  not  going  to  leave,"  she 
said  evenly.  "  What  are  you  going 
to  do  about  it  ?" 

"  How  did  you  get  here  ? " 

"On  my  horse." 

"Where  is  he?" 

"  Tethered  off  the  road." 

"  Very  well  ;  if  you  are  not  on 
that  horse  in  five  minutes,  I  shall 
carry  you  to  it,  and  what  is  more,  I 
shall  kiss  you." 

She  deliberately  moved  into  the 
light  and  pushed  her  cap  to  the 
back  of  her  head,  disarranging  a 
mass  of  curling  dark  hair.  Her 
coloring  was  indefinable  in  the  red 
light,  but  her  eyes  were  large  and 
long,  and  heavily  lashed.  They 
sparkled  wickedly.  The  nostrils  of 
her  finely  cut  nose  were  dilating  ; 
her  short  upper  lip  was  lifted. 
Clive  ardently  hoped  that  she  would 
continue  to  defy  him.  Her  whole 
attitude  was  that  of  a  young  world- 


32  B  TJdbtrl 

ling,  delighting  in  an  unforeseen  ad 
venture. 

"  Who  are  you,  anyhow  ?  "  she  de 
manded.  "  Of  course  I  could  see 
at  once  that  you  were  a  gentleman, 
or  I  should  not  have  taken  the 
slightest  notice  of  you." 

"  Thanks.  My  name  is  Owin 
Clive." 

"  Oh,  you  are  Mary  Gordon's 
friend,  that  she  has  been  expect 
ing." 

"  Miss  Gordon  is  an  old  friend  of 
mine."  He  half  consciously  hoped 
that  Miss  Belmont  did  not  know  of 
his  engagement. 

"She  says  you  are  frightfully 
handsome." 

Clive  laughed.  "  I  cannot  imag 
ine  Miss  Gordon  using  any  such  ex 
pression  ;  but  then  she  has  been 
two  years  in  California." 

"  I  suppose  Englishmen  can't 
help  being  rude.  I  remember  ex- 


H  TKflbitl  SsunDer.  33 

actly  what  she  said,  and  she  said  it 
so  slowly  and  placidly.  '  Oh,  yes, 
dear  Miss  Belmont,  I  think  our  men 
are  very  fine-looking  indeed.'  (I 
had  been  black-guarding  them.) 
*  My  friend,  Mr.  Clive,  of  whom  you 
have  heard  me  speak,  is  quite  the 
handsomest  man  I  have  ever  seen." 

"  That  sounds  more  like  it.  And 
that  is  exactly  what  she  would  have 
said  two  years  ago.  I  mean," 
laughing  with  some  embarrassment, 
"  the  way  she  would  have  expressed 
herself." 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  you  are  a  mass  of 
vanity ;  all  men  are.  Yes  ;  your 
Mary  Gordon  is  as  English  as  if  she 
had  never  left  Hertfordshire.  And 
always  will  be.  She  hasn't  a  spark 
of  originality." 

Clive  discerned  her  purpose,  but 
he  replied  coldly,  "  Say  rather  that 
she  has  individuality." 

"  Which  she  hasn't,  and  you  know 


34  8  TKHbirl  Bsunfcer. 

it.  I  have  that.  Do  you  think 
there  is  much  in  common  between 
us?" 

"  How  can  I  tell  after  knowing 
you  ten  minutes  ? " 

"  I  can't  get  a  rise  out  of  you,  I 
see.  You  Englishmen  are  such 
phlegmatic  creatures.  I  don't  be 
lieve  there  is  a  spark  of  impulse 
left  in  your  island." 

"You  are  a  very  brave  young 
woman." 

"  Why  ? "  She  drew  her  eye 
lashes  together,  shooting  forth  au 
dacity. 

"  Do  you  want  me  to  kiss  you  ?  " 

The  muscles  of  her  face  twitched 
angrily.  "An  Englishman's  only 
idea  of  wit  is  impertinence." 

"What  have  Englishmen  done  to 
you  that  you  are  so  bitter  ?  I 
don't  believe  those  lordlings  I  have 
heard  of,  proposed,  after  all." 

"They   did,"    replied   Miss   Bel- 


a  TlClbirl  B0unfcer.  35 

mont  emphatically,  and  quite  re 
stored.  "  Every  last  one  of  them. 
I  made  Dynebor  fetch  and  carry 
like  a  trained  dog.  It  was  great 
fun.  I  used  to  say,  before  a  room 
full  of  people,  *  Go  get  my  fan,  little 
man  ;  I  left  it  with  Charley  Rollins 
in  the  conservatory.'  And  he 
would  trot  off  ;  he  was  that  hard 
up,  poor  thing  !  " 

"  I  am  glad  you  did  not  marry 
any  of  them  ;  I  am  sure  they  were 
not  good  enough  for  you." 

"  How  polite  of  you.  Why  don't 
you  step  out  and  let  me  see  you  ?" 

"  My  vanity  will  not  permit.  I 
feel  sure  that  your  remarkable 
frankness  would  not  allow  you  to 
disguise  your  disappointment." 

"  Well,  I  shall  see  you  on  Sunday. 
You  are  coming  with  Miss  Gordon 
to  dine  with  me.  She  has  accepted 
for  you." 

"  I  shall  wait  until  then.     I  look 


36  a.  Wbirl 

better  in  evening  clothes  and  when 
I  am  clean." 

"  I  like  your  voice  and  your  fig 
ure,  and  you  certainly  have  a  re 
markable  amount  of  magnetism," 
she  said  meditatively.  "  Good  hea 
vens  !  what  a  row  those  idiots  are 
making.  And  do  look  at  that  bon 
fire.  It  looks  for  all  the  world  as 
if  the  earth  had  run  its  tongue  out 
at  the  moon." 

Clive  wondered  why  he  did  not 
kiss  her.  He  certainly  wanted  to, 
and  he  certainly  would  have  been 
justified.  He  recalled  no  other  at 
tractive  woman  who  would  have  had 
to  offer  half  the  encouragement 
with  which  Miss  Belmont  had 
recklessly  toyed.  A  man  who 
coined  epigrams  for  sale  had  once 
said  of  him  :  "  Clive  is  thorough 
bred  ;  he  can  drink  the  strongest 
whiskey,  smoke  the  blackest  cigars, 
and  he  never  fails  to  kiss  a  pretty 


B  IBabirl  a0un&er»  37 

woman  when  the  opportunity  offers." 
And  yet,  so  far,  something  about 
Miss  Belmont  stayed  him.  He  had 
no  intention  that  it  should  endure, 
however. 

The  scene  was  growing  more  and 
more  picturesque.  Behind  them 
was  a  great  roar,  crossed  by  the 
howling  and  yelling  of  two  hundred 
and  twenty-one  abandoned  throats. 
The  remotest  aisles  of  the  forest 
were  crimson.  Every  needle  of  the 
delicate  young  redwoods,  every 
waving  frond  was  etched  minutely 
on'the  red  transparency.  The  thou 
sand  columns  with  their  stark  capi 
tals  wore  a  softened  and  gracious 
aspect,  albeit  the  general  effect  of 
the  night  was  infernal. 

"  Are  you  going  ?  "  asked  Clive. 

"  No."  She  curled  her  lips  defi 
antly  away  from  ker  teeth. 

Clive  crossed  the  short  space  be 
tween  them  with  one  step,  lifted  her 


38  a  TKflbtcl  BeunDet. 

in  his  arms  and  walked  rapidly  up 
the  trail.  For  a  moment  she  was 
too  stupefied  to  protest ;  then  she  at 
tempted  violently  to  free  herself. 

"What  do  you  mean?"  she  cried 
furiously.  "  Do  you  know  who  I 
am  ?  I  am  in  the  habit  of  doing  ex 
actly  as  I  please.  Everybody  knows 
me  here.  If  you  have  misunder 
stood  me  it's  because  you  are  a 
thick-headed  Englishman,  used  to 
women  who  are  either  stupid  or  bad." 

"  You  mean  that  the  men  you  sur 
round  yourself  with  are  idiots  who 
permit  you  to  play  with  them  as  you 
choose.  Keep  quiet.  Don't  you 
see  that  you  can't  get  away  ?  If 
you  struggle  I  shall  hurt  you,  and  I 
j  don't  want  to  do  that." 

"  I  have  sat  up  all  night  with  men 
and  they  have  never  dared  to  kiss 
me,  however  much  they  may  have 
wanted  to." 

"Then    they   were    rotters,   and 


a  TWlbitl  asunder.  39 

you  can  tell  them  so,  with  my  com 
pliments.  If  I  sat  up  all  night  with 
you  I  should  kiss  you,  and  several 
times." 

"  Well,  you  never  will  !  " 

They  reached  the  road.  She  stiff 
ened  suddenly  and  tried  to  spring 
out  of  his  arms.  He  placed  her  on 
her  feet  and  grasped  her  firmly  by 
the  shoulders. 

"  Now,"  he  said,  "  kiss  me,  and 
don't  be  silly  about  it.  If  you  go  in 
for  larks  of  this  sort  you  must  take 
the  consequences."  She  wrenched 
again.  He  caught  and  held  her  so 
firmly  that  she  could  not  struggle. 

"You  brute  of  an  Englishman," 
she  gasped. 

Clive  clasped  his  hand  about  the 
lower  part  of  her  face  and  lifted  it 
gently.  As  he  did  so  he  shifted  his 
position  and  the  light,  for  the  first 
time,  shone  full  on  his  face.  The 
girl  became  suddenly  quiet.  Some- 


40          a  TKftbirl  Beunfcer, 

thing  leaped  into  her  eyes  which 
his  own  answered.  But  as  he 
bent  his  face  she  moved  her  head 
backward  along  his  shoulder. 

"  Please,  phase  don't,"  she  said 
beseechingly.  "  Oh,  please  don't." 

Clive  let  her  go.  He  walked  with 
her  to  the  horse,  mounted  her,  and 
watched  her  dash  away. 

"What  a  stupid  ass  I  am,"  he 
thought.  "Why  on  earth  didn't  I 
kiss  that  woman  ? " 

He  walked  up  the  road  for  a  few 
moments,  then  turned  and  made  for 
the  clearing. 

The  flames  were  still  leaping  sym 
metrically  upward  into  a  dense  col 
umn  of  smoke,  the  men  still  dancing 
about  the  pyre,  their  enthusiasm  un 
abated.  As  Clive  suddenly  appeared 
in  their  midst  an  immediate  and 
disagreeable  silence  fell.  Clive  had 
never  felt  so  uncomfortable  in  his 
life.  He  concealed  a  certain  amount 


a  TKflbtrl  asunder.  41 

of  natural  shyness  under  a  haughty 
bearing,  which  would  have  repelled 
strangers  had  it  not  been  for  his 
charm  of  expression,  the  quick 
laughter  of  his  eyes. 

"  Does  Mr.  Charles  Rollins  hap 
pen  to  be  here  ? "  he  asked  stiffly. 
"  I  have  brought  a  letter  to  him. 
My  name  is  Clive.  I  have  an  apol 
ogy  to  make.  I  stumbled  upon 
your  strange  ceremony  and  watched 
it,  not  knowing  at  the  time  that 
there  was  anything  private  about 
it " 

"  Don't  mention  it.  Don't  men 
tion  it,"  cried  a  hearty  voice.  A 
young  man  pushed  forward  from 
the  back  of  the  circle  and  grasped 
his  hand.  "  I  had  a  letter  from 
Stanley  and  hoped  you  would  get 
here  in  time  for  this.  You  can  make 
up  for  being  late  only  by  drinking 
six  quarts  of  fizz  between  now  and 
sunrise.  Boys,  come  up  and  shake." 


42  B  Wbitl  asun&er. 

Clive's  hand  was  shaken,  with  a 
solemnity  which  at  first  embar 
rassed,  then  amused  him,  by  every 
man  present.  Then  solemnity  van 
ished,  and  with  it  any  lingering  rem 
nant  of  Clive's  shyness. 

The  odor  of  savory  viands  mingled 
with  burning  pitch  and  the  subtler 
perfumes  of  the  forest.  A  great 
table  was  spread.  Champagne  corks 
flew.  Before  an  hour  was  done  Clive 
was  voted  the  liveliest  Englishman, 
that  had  ever  set  foot  in  California, 
and  elected  off-hand  an  honorary 
member  of  the  Bohemian  Club. 


CHAPTER  II. 

AT  four  o'clock  Clive  once  more 
started  for  Yorba.  He  had  not 
drunken  six  quarts  of  champagne, 
but  he  had  commanded  the  respect 
of  his  comrades  by  the  courage 
with  which  he  had  mixed  his  drinks. 
Rollins  had  held  his  head  under  a 
waterfall,  in  the  little  river,  but 
it  still  felt  very  large.  He  took 
off  his  straw  hat  and  looked  at  it 
resentfully.  Why  had  he  not  worn 
his  traveling  cap  ?  He  also  felt 
depressed,  and  reproached  himself 
vehemently.  What  must  Mary- 
Gordon  think  ?  Doubtless  she  was 
sitting  up,  waiting  for  him,  and 
thought  him  dead — murdered. 
Nevertheless  he  had  enjoyed  him- 


44  B  Wbitl  Baun&er. 

self  thoroughly,  and  he  found  re 
morse  more  coy  than  he  would  have 
wished.  He  had  an  uneasy  con 
sciousness  that  if  his  head  did  not 
ache  so  confoundedly  he  would  not 
feel  remorse  at  all. 

His  thoughts  wandered  to  Miss 
Belmont.  "  I  believe  I  found  the 
woman  for  the  forest,  after  all.  I 
wonder  if  she  would  fit  it  as  well 
now.  Perhaps,  in  another  mood.  I 
fancy  she  is  a  woman  of  many." 

The  redwoods  were  dripping  with 
mist,  itself  as  motionless  as  the 
silent  trees  it  shrouded.  It  filled 
every  hollow,  was  banked  in  every 
aisle,  lay  like  silver  cobweb  on  the 
young  redwoods  and  ferns.  It  em 
phasized  the  ghastly  silence.  Not 
a  bird  was  awake,  not  a  crawling 
thing  moved.  Once  a  panther  cried 
far  up  on  the  mountain,  but  that  was 
all. 

Clive   came   upon   the    hotel    an 


a  THflbicl  BsunDer.  45 

hour  later,  a  long  rough  wooden 
structure  at  the  foot  of  the  mountain, 
up  which  straggled  many  cottages. 
Hard  by,  across  a  little  creek,  were  a 
saloon  and  billiard  room.  As  he 
ascended  the  steps,  a  stout  man  with 
a  red  heavy  face,  came  out  of  the 
office,  stretching  himself. 

"  You're  Mr.  Clive,  the  Gordons' 
friend,  I  surmise,"  he  said. 

"  I  hope  they  haven't  sat  up  for 
me."  He  devoutly  hoped  they  had 
not. 

"They  hain't.  Miss  Gordon 
waited  till  twelve,  then  concluded 
you'd  fallen  in  with  the  Bohemian 
Club,  as  she  knowed  you'd  brought 
a  letter  to  Rollins.  Jedging  by  the 
looks  of  you  I  should  say  you  had. 
Come  over  to  the  bar  and  taper  off. 
My  name's  Hart  and  I  run  this  ho 
tel." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  Clive  grimly, 
"  but  I'll  have  no  more  to-night.  Be 


46  B  'Qdbirl  Bsunfcer. 

good  enough  to  show  me  to  my  room, 
and  be  sure  to  have  me  wakened  at 
eight.  I  suppose  Mr.  and  Miss  Gor 
don  are  not  up  before  then.  If  they 
are,  please  give  them  my  compli 
ments  and  tell  them  that  I  did  fall 
in  with  the  Bohemian  Club. 


CHAPTER  III. 

WHEN  Clive  awoke  and  looked  at 
his  watch  it  was  a  quarter  to  three 
in  the  afternoon.  He  sprang  out  of 
bed  in  dismay.  He  was  an  ideal 
lover  !  If  Mary  Gordon  sent  him 
about  his  business  he  could  not  ques 
tion  the  justice  of  the  act.  After  a 
hurried  tub  and  toilet  he  went  in 
search  of  his  landlord. 

"  Why  in  thunder  didn't  you  call 
me  at  eight  ?  "  he  asked  savagely. 

"  Miss  Gordon  was  up  at  seven, 
mister,  and  she  gave  strict  orders 
that  you  was  not  to  be  disturbed. 
I'm  to  take  you  over  to  her  cottage 
the  minute  you  show  up  and  to  send 
a  broiled  chicken  after  you." 

"  She's  an  angel,"  thought  Clive, 


48  H  THUbirl 

"and  will  certainly  make  an  ideal 
wife." 

He  followed  his  host  out  of  the 
hotel  and  up  the  hill.  The  summer 
girl  in  pink  and  blue,  sailor  hat  and 
shirt-waist,  dotted  the  greenery  ;  in 
rare  instances  attended  by  a  swain. 
On  the  piazzas  of  the  hotel  and  cot 
tages  older  women  knitted  or  read 
novels. 

The  day  was  very  warm.  The 
sun  shone  down  into  the  forest 
above  and  about  the  cottages,  where 
the  trees  were  not  so  densely  planted 
as  in  the  depths.  The  under  forest 
looked  very  green  and  fresh.  A 
creek  murmured  somewhere.  Bees 
hummed  drowsily. 

Clive's  head  still  ached  and  he  was 
hungry  ;  but  at  this  moment  he  was 
conscious  of  nothing  but  a  para 
mount  wish  to  see  Mary  Gordon. 

Mr.  Gordon,  a  pink-faced  man 
with  white  side-whiskers,  was  stand- 


B  TTClbtrl  BsunDer.  49 

ing  on  the  piazza  of  a  tiny  cottage 
which  looked  as  if  it  had  been  built 
in  a  night.  He  winked  at  Cliveas  he 
came  down  and  shook  him  heartily 
by  the  hand.  He  had  loved  his  wife 
and  been  kind  to  her,  but  had  always 
done  exactly  as  he  pleased. 

"  She's  inside,"  he  whispered, 
"and  I  don't  think  she'll  row  you. 
Sorry  it  happened,  just  vow  it  never 
will  again  and  she'll  forget  it.  They 
always  do,  bless  them  !  " 

Clive  went  hastily  into  the  little 
parlor.  Mary  Gordon  was  standing 
in  the  middle  of  the  room,  her  hands 
tightly  clasped,  her  eyes  very  bright, 
her  upper  lip  caught  between  her 
teeth.  Clive  saw  in  a  glance  that 
she  had  more  style  and  grace  of 
carriage  than  when  she  had  left 
England.  Her  hair  was  more  fash 
ionably  arranged,  and  altogether  she 
was  a  handsomer  girl.  He  took  her 
in  his  arms  and  kissed  her  many 


50  B  TKHbirl  HsunDer. 

times,  and  she  cried  softly  on  his 
shoulder.  He  humbled  himself  to 
the  dust  and  was  told  that  he  must 
always  do  exactly  what  he  wanted  ; 
and  he  felt  a  distinct  thrill  of  pleas- 
ureable  domestic  anticipation.  He 
had  been  spoiled  all  his  life,  and 
would  have  taken  to  matrimonial 
discipline  very  unkindly. 

When  he  had  eaten  of  the  broiled 
chicken  and  several  other  substan 
tial  delicacies,  and  was  at  peace 
with  himself  and  the  world  once 
more,  he  went  for  a  long  walk  in  the 
forest  with  Mary.  After  a  time 
they  sat  down  on  a  log,  and  he  lit 
his  pipe  and  tried  to  imagine  an 
environment  of  English  oaks  and 
beeches.  Again  and  more  forcibly 
he  felt  the  discordance  between  the 
English  girl,  simplified  by  genera 
tions  of  discipline  and  homogene 
ous  traditions,  and  this  green  light, 
this  strange  brooding  silence,  this 


a  TWlbtrl  Bsunfcer.  51 

vast  solitude  suggesting  a  new 
world,  a  new  race,  an  unimaginable 
future,  this  hot  electric  sensuous 
air. 

They  talked  of  the  past  two  years 
and  of  their  future  together. 

"  I  have  not  told  anyone  yet  that 
we  are  engaged,"  said  Mary. 
"  People  here  don't  seem  to  take 
things  as  seriously  as  we  do,  and  I 
could  not  stand  being  chaffed  about 
it.  I  have  merely  said  that  we 
expected  an  old  and  dear  friend  of 
the  family." 

"  I  am  glad.  It's  a  bore  to  be 
chaffed." 

"  Of  course,  I  have  written  to  all 
our  friends  in  England  that  we  are 
to  be  married  on  the  twelfth.  But 
as  the  wedding  is  to  be  so  quiet  it 
is  not  necessary  to  tell  anyone 
here." 

"  How  do  you  like  this  country  ?  " 
he  asked  curiously.  "I  mean  how 


52  a  TJdbfrl 

does   it  suit    you   personally  ?     Of 
course,  I  know  you  would  make   up 
your  mind  to  like  any   place  where 
duty  happened   to     take   you,   but 
you  must  have  a  private  little  idea 
on  the  subject,  and  it  is  your   duty 
to  tell  me  everything." 
I     She  smiled  happily.     "  <  Well ! '  as 
they  say  here,    now  that  I  am  sure 
that  Edith  will  make  papa  comfort 
able,   I     shall   be   glad    enough  to 
go     back   to   England.      California 
doesn't  suit  me  at  all.     It  rubs  me 
the  wrong  way.     I  think  I    should 
develop  nerves  if  I  stayed  here  much 
longer.    Americans  don't  seem  to  me 
to  be  half  human.     Helena  Belmont 
says  that  America  will  be  the  great 
est  nation  on   earth  when  it   gets  a 
soul,  but    that    it  is    nothing   but  a 
kicking    squalling,     precocious    in 
fant   at  present  ;  and   that  if  some 
one  were  clever  enough  to  stick  his 
finger  in  the  soft  spot  on  the  top  of 


a  TKflbirl  asun&er.  53 

its  head,  it  would  transform  it  into 
an  idiot  or  a  corpse  ;  but  that  Amer 
ica  will  pull  though  all  right  because 
she  has  so  many  weak  points  that 
her  enemies  forget  which  is  the 
weakest.  Miss  Belmont  is  so 
clever.  You  will  meet  her  on 
Sunday.  You  don't  mind  my  hav 
ing  accepted  an  invitation  for  you  to 
dine  there  ?  " 

"  Not  at  all.  It  was  very  kind 
of  you,  I  am  sure.  I  have  heard  of 
this  Miss  Belmont  ;  I  don't  imagine 
you  find  much  in  common  with  her." 

"  She  horrifies  me,  but  she  fasci 
nates  me  more  than  any  person  I 
have  met  here.  I  am  sure  she  is  a 
good  woman  in  spite  of  the  reckless 
things  she  does.  Your  friend  Mr. 
Rollins,  says  that  she  is  the  concen 
trated  essence  of  California,  and  I 
always  excuse  her  on  that  ground. 
You  never  know  what  she  is  going 
do  or  say  next  ;  and  she  is  the 


54  H  TOlbfrl  BsunDei* 

most  desperate  flirt  I  ever  heard  of. 
I  suppose  she  is  so  beautiful  she 
can't  help  it.  Her  eyes  always 
seem  to  be  looking  at  you  through 
tears,  even  when  they  are  laughing 
or  flirting,  although  I  don't  believe 
she  sheds  many.  I  cannot  imagine 
her  crying,  although  I  know  her  to 
be  kind-hearted,  and  generous,  and 
impulsive." 

"  Do  you  call  it  kind-hearted  to 
throw  fifteen  men  over  ? " 

"  I  told  her  once  that  I  thought  it 
was  morally  wrong  for  her  to  lure 
men  on  to  such  a  terrible  awaken 
ing,  and  she  said  that  there  was  just 
one  thing  that  man  didn't  know, 
which  was  woman  ;  and  that  it  was 
her  duty  to  her  sex  to  addle  their 
brains  on  the  subject  as  much  as 
possible.  But  I  want  you  to  know 
me,  Owin." 

"  The  better  I  know  you  the  bet 
ter  I  shall  love  you." 


B  Wbfrl  BeunOer.  55 

"  When  your  eyes  laugh  like  that 
I  never  know  whether  you  are  chaff 
ing  me  or  not.  It  will  not  take 
long,  for  I  am  not  clever;"  she 
smiled  a  little  sadly  ;  "  you  are  so 
clever  that  I  know  you  will  often 
want  to  go  and  talk  to  women  who 
know  more  than  I  do  ;  but  none  of 
them  will  ever  love  you  so  well." 

"  I  know  it,"  he  said  tenderly, 
and  he  believed  what  he  said. 

"  I  am  glad  that  I  have  been  in 
California,  though,"  pursued  Mary. 
"  It  has  broadened  me.  At  home 
we  take  it  for  granted  that  all  the 
unconventional  people  are  bad,  and 
all  the  conventional  ones  good. 
Here  it  is  so  different ;  although  I 
must  say  that  I  never  heard  so 
much  petty  gossip  and  scandal  in 
my  life  as  there  is  in  the  smart  set 
in  San  Francisco.  All  visitors 
remark  that ;  I  suppose  it  is  be 
cause  they  have  so  little  to  do 


56          21  THRbtrl  asun&er. 

and  think  about.  It  is  very  slow 
here  socially  ;  and  I  suppose  that  is 
what  makes  some  of  the  women  do 
such  outlandish  things — that  and 
the  country,  for  even  the  quiet  ones 
are  not  exactly  like  other  people. 
One  can  judge  for  oneself.  I  have 
often  pinned  the  tattlers  down  when 
they  were  abusing  Helena  Belmont,. 
for  instance,  and  they  could  not 
verify  a  single  statement." 

"  Women   know  each  other   very 
little,"  said  Clive. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

HE  passed  his  nights  in  the  Bo 
hemian  Club  camp,  his  mornings 
in  bed,  the  remainimg  hours  wan 
dering  about  with  his  betrothed  ; 
and  felt  that  altogether  life  was  not 
understood  by  the  pessimists.  Eng 
land,  with  the  struggles  and  cares 
and  responsibilities  it  held  in  store 
for  him,  seemed  to  exist  only  be 
tween  the  rusty  covers  of  history, 
and  life  a  thing  to  be  dawdled  away 
in  a  wonderful  forest,  where  the 
very  air  made  a  man  hate  the 
thought  of  all  that  was  hard  and 
ugly  and  too  serious. 

Clive  was  something  more  than 
curious  to  see  Miss  Belmont  again, 
but  hardly  knew  whether  he  ought 
to  go  to  her  house  or  not.  It 


58  a  Wbirl  asunDet. 

was  possible  that  she  expected  him 
to  decline  an  invitation  proffered 
before  an  unpleasant  adventure  ; 
but  unless  he  pleaded  sudden  ill 
ness  he  did  not  see  his  way  out  of 
acceptance.  On  Saturday,  how 
ever,  Mary  received  a  note  from 
the  chatelaine  of  Casa  del  Norte, 
reminding  her  of  the  dinner  and  of 
her  promise  to  bring  Mr.  Clive. 

"  Charley  Rollins  tells  me  that  he 
is  the  best  all-round  Englishman  he 
has  ever  known,"  the  note  con 
cluded  ;  "not  the  least  bit  of  a  cad. 
I  am  most  anxious  to  meet  him." 

Mary  laughed  as  she  handed  the 
note  to  Clive.  "  If  any  other 
woman  had  written  that  I'd  never 
enter  her  house  again.  But,  some 
how,  you  let  her  say  and  do  exactly 
what  she  chooses.  The  trouble  is 
that  the  only  Englishmen  she  has 
met  have  been  fortune-hunters. 
When  we  are  married  I'll  ask  her 


a  TOlbirl  B0unDer,  59 

over  to  visit  us,  and  let  her  meet 
men  who  are  almost  as  perfect  as 
you  are." 

Clive  said  "  Yes,  dear,"  absently. 
Three  days  of  unshifting  devotion 
had  blunted  the  fine  point  of  his 
content. 

The  next  day  Mary  was  prostrate 
with  one  of  the  severe  headaches  to 
which  she  was  subject,  and  sent 
Clive  off  with  Charley  Rollins  to 
the  dinner. 

"  Go,  go,  my  boy,"  Mr.  Gordon 
had  said  to  him,  when  Clive  had 
displayed  a  decent  amount  of  reluc 
tance  ;  "  she'll  be  too  ill  to  be 
spoken  to  for  twenty-four  hours. 
You  could  do  no  good  by  hanging 
round." 

During  the  hour's  drive  through 
the  redwoods  Clive  said  to  Rollins, 
"You  are  a  great  friend  of  Miss 
Belmont,  are  you  not  ?  " 


60  a  Tttflbirl 

*  I  am,  for  a  fact." 

"  Have  you  known  her  long  ?  " 

"  She  nearly  scratched  my  eyes 
out  when  she  was  three  and  I  five. 
I've  adored  her  ever  since,  and 
think  the  reason  I've  been  able  to 
hang  on  successfully  is  because  I've 
never  proposed  to  her." 

"  I've  heard  several  opinions  of 
her,  and  I'd  like  yours.  I  can't  say 
that,  so  far,  I've  met  any  one  likely 
to  understand  her.  You  should, 
particularly  as  you  have  never  made 
love  to  her.'' 

Rollins  half  closed  his  shrewd, 
dark  eyes,  and  tilted  his  hat  over 
his  nose.  Like  all  San  Francisco 
men,  he  looked  carelessly  dressed, 
although  in  evening  clothes,  and 
carried  himself  badly  ;  but  his  face 
was  clear  and  refined,  his  hair  and 
beard  trimly  cut. 

"  Helena  Belmont,"  he  said,  in 
what  the  club  called  his  "  summ- 


a  "Cdbtrl  Bsunder.  61 

ing-up  voice,"  has  the  genius  of  Cal 
ifornia  in  her,  like  Sibyl  Sanderson 
and  a  dozen  others  I  could  mention 
without  stopping  to  think,  although 
they  would  be  mere  names  to  you. 
You  see,  it  is  like  this  :  all  sorts  of 
men  came  here  in  early  days — poor 
men  of  good  family  who  had  failed 
at  home,  or  were  too  proud  to  work 
there  ;  desperadoes,  adventurers, 
men  of  middle  life  and  broken  for 
tunes — all  of  them  expecting  every 
thing  from  the  new  land,  and  ready 
to  tear  the  heart  out  of  anyone  who 
got  in  their  way.  It  was  every  man 
for  himself  and  the  devil  take  the 
hindmost.  Many  succeeded.  Some 
of  their  methods  will  not  bear  the 
fierce  light  of  history.  That  savage 
spirit,  that  instinct  to  trample  to  a 
goal  over  anything  or  anybody,  that 
intolerance  of  restraint,  still  lingers 
in  the  very  atmosphere,  and  is 
quick  in  the  blood  of  many  of 


62  a  TSUbirl  Bsun&er. 

the  present  generation,  although, 
strangely  enough,  it  has  given  a 
distincter  individuality  to  the  wo 
men  than  to  the  men.  Of  course, 
there  are  Californians  and  Califor- 
nians.  It  is  always  a  mistake  to 
generalize  too  freely,  but  the  type  I 
speak  of  is  the  most  significant,  al 
though  you  will  find  no  Californian 
exactly  like  any  other  American. 
This  is  the  land  of  the  composite. 
All  America  and  all  Europe  have 
emptied  themselves  into  it.  God 
knows  what  it  will  sift  down  to 
eventually — the  commonplace,  prob 
ably.  As  for  Helena  Belmont,  Jack 
Belmont,  her  father,  came  here  in 
the  fifties,  and  hung  up  his  shingle. 
He  was  one  of  the  cleverest  law 
yers  the  State  has  had.  He  rarely 
drew  a  sober  breath,  and  was  never 
seen  to  stagger  ;  he  was  an  inveter 
ate  gambler,  and  a  terror  with 
women.  He  married  a  Miss  Lowell, 


a  TKflbtrl  H0unC»er,  63 

of  Boston,  who  came  out  here  on  a 
visit — a  beautiful  girl  ;  and  God 
knows  what  she  went  through  with 
him.  You  may  be  surprised  that 
she  married  him.  I  may  have 
given  you  the  impression  that  he 
was  a  cowboy  in  a  red  shirt  and 
sombrero.  Jack  Belmont  was  one 
of  the  most  elegant  men  this  State 
has  ever  seen,  a  gentleman  when  he 
was  drunkest,  and  the  idol  of  the 
Southern  set,  a  strong  contingent 
here.  There  you  have  the  elements 
of  which  Helena  Belmont  is  made 
up.  She  has  the  blood  of  Cavaliers 
and  Roundheads  in  her  veins  ;  she 
grew  up  amidst  the  clash  of  the 
South  against  the  North,  for  no  two 
people  could  ever  have  been  more 
unmated  than  her  mother  and 
father  ;  and  she  was  born  in  Cali 
fornia,  nurtured  on  its  new  savage 
traditions,  and  mentally  and  tem 
peramentally  fitted  to  draw  in  twice 


64  H  "CClbirt  Bsun&er. 

her  measure  of  its  atmosphere.  She 
does  what  she  pleases,  because  she 
would  never  know  if  she  were 
beaten,  has  a  tremendous  personal 
ity  and  a  million  dollars.  Here  we 
are." 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  forest  had  ended  abruptly. 
They  had  come  upon  a  large  low 
adobe  house  on  a  plateau,  looking 
down  over  a  shelving  table-land 
upon  the  ocean,  a  mile  below. 

"  It's  about  eighty  years  old," 
said  Rollins,  "  which  is  antique  in 
this  country.  It  belonged  to  one  of 
the  grandees  of  the  old  time,  and 
Miss  Belmont  bought  it  shortly 
after  her  father's  death.  She  has 
several  houses,  but  this  is  her  fav 
orite.  It  has  about  thirty  rooms, 
and  there  have  been  some  jolly  good 
times  up  here,  I  can  tell  you. 
Those  are  the  original  tiles  and  the 
original  walls,  but  everything  else 
has  been  pretty  well  modernized, 
except  that  old  orchard  you  see  on 


66  a  TClbftl 

the  other  side  and  the  vineyard  and 
rose-garden." 

They  dismounted  at  an  open  gate 
way  in  a  high  adobe  wall,  and  en 
tered  a  large  orderless  garden.  The 
air  was  sweet  with  the  delicate  per 
fume  of  Castilian  roses,  whose 
green,  thorny  bushes,  thick  with 
pink,  rioted  over  the  walls,  up  the 
oaks,  across  the  paths,  and  looked 
as  if  no  hand  had  cut  or  trimmed 
them  since  the  old  Spaniard  had 
coaxed  them  from  the  soil,  nearly  a 
century  ago. 

"  She  hates  modern  gardens," 
said  Rollins,  "  and  has  never  had  a 
gardener  in  this.  We'd  prefer  to 
walk  without  leaving  ourselves  in 
shreds  and  patches  on  the  thorns,  but 
if  it  suits  her  I  suppose  it's  all  right." 

They  entered  the  house  opposite 
a  courtyard  filled  with  palm-trees 
and  rustic  chairs.  A  large  curi 
ously  modelled  fountain,  which 


B  TKabirl  Ssun&er,  67 

Rollins  told  Clive  was  the  work  of 
the  old  Franciscans,  splashed  lazily. 
Several  young  men  were  swinging  in 
hammocks  on  the  corridor  which 
traversed  the  four  sides  of  the  court. 
A  Chinese  servant,  in  blouse  and 
pendant  cue,  was  passing  cocktails. 

Rollins  conducted  Clive  into  a 
small  drawing-room,  fitted  in  cop 
per-colored  silken  stuffs,  and  over 
looking  the  ocean.  Neither  Miss 
Belmont  nor  her  aunt  was  present, 
and  Rollins  introduced  Clive  to  the 
assembled  guests,  with  running  foot 
notes  not  intended  for  the  ear  of  the 
subject. 

"  Miss  Lord  " — presenting  Clive 
to  a  tall  handsome,  scornful-looking 
girl.  "  She  tears  out  reputations 
with  her  teeth.  Miss  Carter — a 
clever  little  snob,  who  is  a  joy  to 
flirt  with  because  you  know  she  is 
too  selfish  to  fall  in  love  with  you. 
Mrs.  Lent — an  army  flirt,  who  has 


68  a  Tffilbicl  Bsun&er. 

done  much  to  educate  the  youth  of 
San  Francisco.  Mrs.  Volney — a 
widow  with  a  commanding  talent 
for  marrying  and  burying  rich  hus 
bands.  Miss  Leonard — who  plays 
better  than  any  woman  in  San  Fran 
cisco,  which  is  saying  a  good  deal  ; 
a  lovely  girl,  if  a  trifle  cold.  Mrs. 
Tower — a  really  charming  young 
widow,  with  a  voice  as  fiery  as  her 
eyes.  Miss  West — who  is  half 
Spanish,  a  good  deal  of  a  prude,  and 
a  most  accomplished  flirt.  Here 
comes  Mrs.  Cartright,  who  has  the 
honor  of  being  Miss  Belmont's 
aunt,  chaperon,  and  slave." 

A  middle-aged  lady — small,  stout, 
but  with  much  dignity  of  bearing, 
her  dark  face  refined  and  gentle — 
entered,  and  greeted  Clive  with  the 
rich  Southern  brogue  which  twenty 
years  of  California  had  not  tem 
pered.  As  he  exchanged  platitudes 
with  her  she  reminded  him  of  a 


a  Iffilbfrl  BaunDer.  69 

gentle  breeze  which  had  wandered 
aimlessly  in,  barely  touching  his 
cheek.  She  talked  incessantly,  and 
wholly  without  consequence. 

Clive  had  created  a  perceptible 
flutter  among  the  women.  Being  a. 
shy  man,  he  was  painfully  aware 
that  every  eye  in  the  room  was 
upon  him,  and  that  he  was  being  dis 
cussed  behind  more  than  one  fan. 
The  other  men — society  youths — 
had  entered,  and  looked  crude  and 
new  beside  him.  He  had  the 
straight  figure  of  the  athlete,  and 
carried  his  clothes  in  a  manner 
which  made  Rollins  feel,  as  he  con 
fided  to  Miss  Carter,  like  hitching  up 
his  trousers.  His  closely  cut  hair 
was  almost  black  ;  his  moustache 
the  color  of  straw,  and  as  uneven 
as  frequent  conflagrations  could 
make  it,  fell  over  a  delicately-cut, 
strong,  mobile  mouth.  It  had  ta 
ken  many  generations  to  breed  his 


70  a  Wbicl  BsunDer* 

profile — so  delicate  and  sensitive 
was  it,  yet  so  strong.  His  eyes 
were  grey  and  well  set,  full  of 
humour  and  fire.  The  chin  and 
neck  were  a  trifle  heavy.  There 
was  something  very  splendid  about 
the  whole  appearance  of  the  man, 
and  he  filled  the  eye  whenever  he 
stood  in  a  room. 

Mrs.  Cartwright's  fluttering  atten 
tion  having  been  deflected  else 
where,  he  plunged  his  hands  into 
his  pockets  and  talked  to  Mrs.  Vol- 
ney,  whose  crepe  set  off  a  pair  of 
shoulders  of  which  he  approved. 
She  was  a  remarkably  pretty  woman, 
with  large  innocent-looking  green 
eyes  and  golden  hair,  and  conversed 
with  a  babyish  inflection  which  he 
thought  very  fetching.  In  a  mo 
ment  he  forgot  her,  and  went  toward 
the  door  with  Rollins.  Miss  Bel- 
mont  had  entered. 

The     pink    color    in     her     face 


B  "Gdbirl  BsunDer*  71 

flamed  for  a  moment,  but  her  eyes 
lit  with  an  admiration  so  unmistak 
able  that  Clive,  too,  colored  and 
laughed  nervously.  He  wondered 
if  his  eyes  were  as  frank  as  hers. 
Her  tall  slim  figure  was  very  round  ; 
the  delicate  neck  carried  no  superflu 
ous  flesh,  but  was  apparently  bone 
less.  The  small  proud  head  was 
poised  well  back.  Clive  knew  her 
features  ;  but  the  rich  mahogany- 
brown  hair,  crisp  and  electric,  and 
curling  unmanageably,  the  dark 
blue  eyes,  the  warm  whiteness  of 
kin,  the  pink  of  cheek  and  lips, 
were  the  splendid  finish  of  a  hasty 
sketch.  Her  white  gown  was  of 
some  silken  stuff  embroidered  with 
silver,  and  pearls  were  in  her  hair 
and  about  her  throat.  She  looked 
as  proud  and  calm  and  well-con 
ducted  as  a  young  empress. 

"  Of  course  this  is   Mr.    Clive," 
she  said.     "  You  are  not  at  all  nee- 


72  a  TRHbitl  B' 

essary,  Charley.  I  am  so  sorry  Miss 
Gordon  is  ill.  Give  me  your  arm  ; 
dinner  is  ready.  I  know  that  you 
have  not  told  anyone,"  she  mur 
mured,  as  they  walked  down  the 
corridor. 

"  How  do  you  know  ?  It  is  a 
good  story,  and  I  may  have  told  it 
all  over  the  place." 

"  I  am  sure  you  have  not  even 
told  it  to  Miss  Gordon." 

"Why  Miss  Gordon  ?"  he  asked, 
smiling  into  her  frankly  curious 
eyes. 

"  Are  you  engaged  to  her  ? " 

He  laughed  but   made   no   reply. 

"  I  don't  believe  you  are,"  she 
said  abruptly,  after  they  were 
seated.  "You  don't  look  the  least 
bit  as  if  anyone  owned  you." 

"  Why  did  you  make  an  English 
room  of  this  ?  It  might  have  been 
taken  bodily  out  of  some  old  manor 
house.  These  Chinamen  in  it  are 


a  *GClbirl  Bsun&er.  73 

an  anomaly.  I  should  have  thought 
you  would  rather  preserve  the 
character  of  the  country." 

"  The  old  Californians  had  no 
taste  whatever  about  interiors — 
whitewashed  walls  and  hair  cloth 
furniture.  Besides,  we  have  just 
about  as  much  of  California  out 
here  as  we  can  stand,  and  like  to 
import  something  else  into  it  occa 
sionally." 

There  were  eighteen  people  at 
table.  The  conversation  was  prin 
cipally  about  other  people.  Occa 
sionally,  a  current  novel  or  play 
captured  a  few  moments'  attention, 
but  the  talk  soon  swung  trium 
phantly  back  to  personalities. 
Clive  had  never  seen  so  many 
pretty  women  together.  One  or 
two  were  beautiful.  The  dense 
blackness  of  Mrs.  Tower's  hair,  the 
red  and  olive  of  her  skin,  the  high 
cheek  bones,  inadvertently  mod- 


74  21  TKlbitl  asunDet. 

elled  features  and  fierce  eyes  sug 
gested  Indian  ancestry.  Miss 
West's  soft  Spanish  eyes  languished 
or  coquetted,  but  there  was  a  New 
England  meagreness  about  her 
mouth.  Miss  Leonard,  with  her 
tendrt  hair,  and  cold  regular  feat 
ures  might  have  had  all  the  blood 
of  all  the  Howards  in  her.  Mrs. 
Lent  had  a  dark  piquant  Franco- 
American  face.  Miss  Carter  was 
very  small,  very  dignified,  with 
large  cool  intelligent  grey  eyes, 
abundant  yellow  hair,  and  an  Irish 
nose  and  upper  lip.  All  had  the 
slight  bust  and  generous  develop 
ment  of  hip  and  leg  peculiar  to  the 
Californian  women.  The  men  inter 
ested  Clive  less  :  they  looked  very 
ordinary  society  youths,  and  he 
wondered  if  Rollins  could  not  dis 
pose  of  them  collectively  in  an  epi 
gram. 

He  quarrelled  intermittently  with 


B  Wbfrl  asun&er.  75 

Miss  Belmont :  they  did  not  hit  it 
off.  Nevertheless,  he  wondered  if 
it  could  be  the  rashling  he  had  met 
in  the  forest.  She  still  wore  her  re 
gal  air  and  would  have  looked  as 
cold  as  one  of  the  fine  marbles  in 
her  drawing-room,  had  it  not  been 
for  her  lavish  coloring.  She  took 
little  part  in  the  general  conversa 
tion,  and  he  said  to  her  abruptly — 

"  These  people  don't  seem  to  in 
terest  you." 

"  I'm  tired  to  death  of  them.  I'll 
turn  them  all  out  presently.  I 
bought  this  place  to  be  near  the  red 
woods,  which  I  love  better  than 
anything  in  the  world,  and  I  like  to 
entertain  by  fits  and  starts.  I 
spent  last  winter  here  alone." 

"  I  should  like  to  have  known 
you  then.  When  you  get  time  to 
think  about  yourself  you  must  be  a 
charming  egoist." 

"  You  have  the   most  impertinent 


76          21  TKHbicl  Bsun&er. 

tongue  and  the  most  flirtatious  eyes 
I  have  ever  met." 

"  Where  is  the  man  you  are  en 
gaged  to  ? " 

"Up  at  Shasta  and  the  lava  beds. 
He  will  be  back  in  a  few  days.  You 
will  like  him." 

"  Is  he  a  good  fellow  ?" 

"Yes,"  with  friendly  enthusiasm  ; 
"an  awfully  good  fellow." 

"You  don't  love  him,  though." 

Her  lashes  half  met — a  habit  they 
had.  "No,"  she  said,  "I  don't 
believe  I  do." 

"  Helena  !  Helena  !  "  cried  Rol 
lins.  "  Clive,  I  feel  it  my  duty  to  tell 
you  that  she  is  engaged,  and  for  the 
fifteenth  time." 

"  He  has  been  telling  me  that  I 
am  not  in  love  with  Mr.  Van  Rhuys, 
and  intimating  that  he  has  come  just 
in  time  to  save  me  from  a  fatal 
mistake." 

She  looked  charmingly    imperti- 


21  TKHbirl  BsunDer.  77 

nent,  her  eyes  half  closed,  her  chin 
lifted,  her  pink  lips  pouting  from 
their  classic  lines. 

Clive  was  somewhat  taken  aback, 
but  replied  promptly,  "  If  I  disclaim, 
it  is  from  timidity,  not  lack  of  gal 
lantry  :  I  fear  I  should  learn  more 
than  I  have  the  power  to  teach." 

Everybody  laughed.  Miss  Bel- 
mont's  eyes  sparkled.  "  You 
mean,"  she  said,  when  the  atten 
tion  of  the  others  was  once  more 
diverted,  "  that  you  are  not  going 
to  fall  in  love  with  me.  Everybody 
does,  you  know.  I  never  mind  sur 
rounding  myself  with  beautiful 
women,  because  I  am  much  more 
fascinating  than  any  of  them." 

"  I  am  hopelessly  unoriginal,  but 
I  shall  make  a  desperate  effort  this 
time." 

"  Why  do  you  say  that  ?  You 
look  quite  unlike  anyone  I  have 
ever  seen  ;  I  mean  quite  a  different 


78  B  TMbtrl  Bsun&er. 

person  looks  out  of  your  eyes." 
Her  own  eyes  had  a  frankly  specu 
lative  regard  devoid  of  coquetry. 
Clive's  masculine  vanity  warmed. 

"  You  read  a  great  deal,  I  hear/* 
he  said. 

"  What  an  extraordinary  way  you 
have  of  ignoring  what  a  person  says 
to  you.  Are  you  absent-minded,  or 
deaf,  or  merely  impolite  ?  " 

"Merely  an  Englishman." 

Miss  Belmont's  color  deepened. 
Clive's  eyes  invoked  a  ridiculous 
picture  of  a  stately  young  chdtclaine 
kicking  and  struggling  in  an  Eng 
lishman's  arms. 

"  Why  do  the  people  of  your 
country  take  pride  in  being  rude  ?  " 

"  They  don't.  They  don't  bother 
about  trifles  like  the  men  of  several 
other  nations,  that  is  all.  I'll  open 
the  door  for  you  when  you  leave  the 
room,  and  even  take  off  my  hat  in 
the  lift  and  catch  a  cold  in  my  head, 


21  'Qdbtrl  Bsunfcet.  79 

but  don't  expect  me  to  find  a  reply 
to  all  the  nonsense  a  woman  chooses 
to  talk,  if  a  more  interesting  sub 
ject  occurs  to  me." 

"  Are  you  very  haughty  and  su 
percilious,  or  are  you  very  shy  ? " 

"  What  does  that  mean  ?  " 

"  I  mean  that  you  were  flattered 
to  death  by  what  I  said,  and 
changed  the  subject,  as  a  girl  would 
blush  or  stammer." 

"  I  suspect  you  are  right."  He 
rose  to  let  her  pass.  His  eyes 
laughed  down  into  hers,  and  she 
felt  the  sudden  content  of  a  child 
when  it  is  noticed  by  a  person  of 
superior  years  and  stature. 

"  That  man  has  the  most  charm 
ing  eyes  I  ever  saw,"  she  said,  as 
the  dining-room  door  closed  behind 
the  women.  "  I  don't  believe  they 
ever  could  be  sober." 

"  Just  observe  his  lower  jaw/'  said 
Mrs.  Volney,  with  her  infantile  lisp. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

WHEN  the  men  left  the  dining- 
room  they  found  the  women  in  the 
patio,  or  scattered  about  the  corri 
dor.  There  was  no  moon,  but  the 
clear  sky  blazed  with  stars,  and 
colored  lanterns  swung  between 
the  pillars  or  among  the  broad 
leaves  of  the  palm-trees.  The  girls 
(the  married  women  were  little 
more)  had  thrown  lace  or  silken 
scarves  over  their  heads,  and  flut 
tered  their  fans  idly.  Clive  recalled 
all  he  had  read  of  the  old  time,  and 
imagined  himself  back  among  the 
careless  dons  and  donas  who  lived 
for  little  but  pleasure,  and  had  not 
a  prescience  of  the  complex  civiliza 
tion  to  enter  their  Arcadia  and  rout 
its  very  memory. 


a  "CGlbirl  SsunDer*  81 

Miss  Belmont  was  sitting  on  the 
corridor,  leaning  over  the  low  bal 
ustrade,  her  hands  lightly  clasped. 
She  had  draped  a  white  lace  mantilla 
about  her  head,  and  looked  more 
Spanish  than  Miss  West.  It 
seemed  to  Clive  that  she  had  a 
faculty  of  looking  whatever  she 
wished.  Someone  handed  her  a 
guitar.  She  leaned  against  the 
pillar  and  tuned  it  absently.  Clive 
walked  over  and  stood  staring  down 
on  her,  his  hands  in  his  pockets. 
She  sang,  in  a  rich  contralto  voice, 
a  Spanish  song,  whose  words  he 
could  not  understand,  but  which 
was  the  most  passionate  he  had 
ever  heard.  Her  head  was  thrown 
back.  She  sang  frankly  to  Clive  ; 
her  face  changed  with  every  line. 

When  it  was  over  Mrs.  Cartright 
breathed  a  plaintive  sigh.  "  That's 
the  handsomest  song  that  Helena 
sings,"  she  announced. 


82  B  THUbfrl  B0unOer, 

Helena  arose  abruptly.  "Come," 
she  said  to  Clive.  "  Let  us  go  for  a 
walk." 

He  followed  her  out  into  the 
rose-garden.  There  were  no  lan 
terns  here,  and  it  looked  wilder 
than  by  day.  The  air  was  very 
warm  and  sweet.  Helena  plucked 
one  of  the  pink  Castilian  roses,  and 
fastened  back  her  mantilla  with  it, 
exposing  a  charming  ear. 

"  You  will  never  find  any  occupa 
tion  so  becoming  to  your  hands,"  said 
Clive  dutifully.  "  Are  your  feet  as 
perfect  ?  " 

"They  are  something  to  dream 
of,"  said  Miss  Belmont  flippantly. 

They  went  out  on  to  the  terrace. 
The  ocean  pounded  monotonously, 
tossing  spray  high  into  the  air. 
Clive  looked  at  his  companion. 
Her  head  was  thrown  back,  her  lips 
were  slightly  apart.  She  looked 
like  a  woman  who  held  a  ball  of  fire 


B  TKHbirl  Hsun&er.  83 

between  her  finger-tips,  and  toyed 
with  it  caressingly. 

"  Shall  we  walk  along  the  cliffs  ?" 
She  hesitated  a  moment.     "  No  ; 
let  us  go  into  the  forest." 

As  they  entered  they  were 
greeted  by  a  rush  of  cool  perfumed 
air,  the  scent  of  wild  lilac  and  lily, 
the  strong  bracing  odor  of  redwood 
and  pine.  For  a  hundred  yards  or 
more  there  was  little  brush  ;  the 
great  trees  stood  far  apart  ;  but  as 
they  left  the  plateau  and  ascended 
a  narrow  trail,  the  young  redwoods 
and  ferns  and  lilacs  grew  thick.  It 
was  a  hard  pull  and  they  said  little. 
He  helped  her  up  the  almost  per 
pendicular  ascent,  over  fallen  trees 
and  rocks,  and  huge  roots  spring 
ing  across  the  path  like  pythons, 
and  wondered  if  they  were  pene 
trating  wilds  hitherto  sacred  to  the 
red  man.  Presently  the  low  roar  of 
water  greeted  them,  and  pushing 


34  a  THUfofrl  BsunDer* 

their  way  through  a  small  grove  of 
ferns  they  came  upon  the  high  bank 
of  a  broad  creek.  Beyond  and 
around  rose  the  dark  rigid  forest, 
but  into  the  opening  the  stars  flung 
plentiful  light.  They  revealed  the 
clear  rapid  rush  of  water  over  huge 
stones  and  logs  that  looked  like 
living  things,  great  bunches  of  mai 
den-hair  springing  from  dripping 
boulders,  the  dark  mysterious  per 
spective  of  the  creek. 

Clive  did  not  wonder  if  he  would 
lose  his  head.  He  had  no  intention 
of  keeping  it. 

"  Sit  down,'*  she  said,  arranging 
herself  on  a  fallen  pine  and  lean 
ing  against  a  redwood.  Clive  made 
himself  as  comfortable  as  he  could, 
and  she  gave  him  permission  to 
light  his  pipe. 

The  lace  mantilla,  in  spite  of 
brush  and  briar,  still  clung  to  her 


a  TKUbfrl  Zlsun&er.  85 

head  and  shoulders.  She  looked 
very  lovely  and  womanly. 

"Why  did  you  bring  me  here  ?  " 
he  asked.  "  You  told  me  the  other 
night  that  you  would  never  trust 
yourself  alone  with  me.  This  is 
equivalent  to  saying  that  you  want 
me  to  make  love  to  you.  I  am  quite 
ready." 

"How  brutally  abrupt  you  are. 
I  don't  want  you  to  make  love  to 
me.  I  meant  to  tell  you  before  we 
started  that  I  did  not  expect  it. 
Most  women  do,  I  know,  and  it  must 
be  such  a  relief  to  a  man  to  be  let 
off  occasionally."  She  opened  and 
closed  her  large  fan,  with  a  graceful 
motion  of  the  wrist,  and  then  turned 
and  looked  straight  at  him.  "  I 
have  never  walked  alone  with  a  man 
in  this  forest  before,"  she  said  ; 
"  neither  at  night  nor  in  the  daytime. 
It  would  have  been  spoiled  for  me 
if  I  had." 


£6          H  Wbirl  asunder. 

He  pulled  at  his  pipe.  "You  are 
a  very  brave  woman.  If  what  you 
say  is  true,  what  is  your  reason  for 
bringing  me  here  ? " 

"  I  felt  a  desire  to  do  so,  and  I  al 
ways  obey  my  whims." 

"You  know  that  my  vanity  is 
touched  to  the  quick.  But  will  you 
tell  me  why  you  are  doing  all  you 
can  to  turn  my  head,  if  you  don't 
want  me  to  make  love  to  you  ? " 

"  I  do  want  you  to." 

Clive  laid  down  his  pipe. 

"  No  !  It  would  be  a  pity  to  let 
it  go  out,  and  it  might  set  my  for 
est  on  fire.  Do  let  me  finish. 
Women  are  not  like  men.  A  man  is 
fascinated  by  a  woman,  and  his  one 
impulse  is  to  get  at  her,  and  without 
loss  of  time;  a  woman  may  have 
the  same  impulse,  but  the  dislike  of 
being  won  too  quickly,  the  desire  to 
be  sure  of  herself,  above  all,  the 
wish  to  make  the  man  more  serious 


H  Wbfrl  BaunDer,  87 

— all  these  things  hold  her  back. 
So  I  don't  want  you  to  make  love  to 
me  to-night." 

"  Which  means  that  I  may  later  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  That  will  depend 
on  a  good  many  things,  one  of 
which  is  whether  I  break  my  engage 
ment  with  Schuyler  Van  Rhuys  or 
not.  I  have  some  slight  sense  of 
honor." 

Clive  colored  hotly,  and  for  the 
moment  his  ardor  left  him. 

"  Are  you  thinking  of  breaking  it 
off?" 

"  Somewhat." 

"  Is  it  true  that  you  have  been 
engaged  fifteen  times  ?  " 

"  No  ;  only  eight.  I  have  not  yet 
discovered  that  there  are  fifteen 
interesting  men  in  the  world,  I 
have  only  met  nine." 

"You  can  flatter  charmingly. 
But  you  say  you  have  a  sense  of 
honor.  What  would  you  think  of  a 


88  B  TKHbitl  asimoer, 

man  who  deceived  and  jilted  eight 
girls  ?  " 

"  It  is  quite  different  with  a  man  ; 
women  are  so  helpless.  But  when 
a  woman  has  the  reputation  of  being 
fickle,  men  know  what  to  expect  and 
propose  with  their  eyes  open.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  not  an 
atom  of  the  flirt  in  me  ;  of  coquetry, 
perhaps,  for  I  have  an  irrepressible 
desire  to  please  the  man  who  has 
pleased  me.  To  most  men  I  am 
clay.  I  am  doing  all  I  can  to  fasci 
nate  you,  and  I  shall  continue  to  do 
so.  I  engaged  myself  to  each  of 
those  eight  men,  honestly  believing 
that  I  could  love  him — that  I  had 
found  a  companion.  If  I  ever  suf 
fered  the  delusion  that  any  one  of 
them  was  my  grande  passion,  the  de 
lusion  was  brief.  Still,  I  gave  up  all 
idea  of  that  some  years  ago.  With 
each  of  those  men  I  set  myself  hon 
estly  to  work  to  get  into  sympathy, 


a  TKttbtrl  Blunder.  Sc> 

and  to  love  him.  Of  course,  you 
will  understand  that  I  had  been 
more  or  less  fascinated  in  each 
case.  If  a  man  has  not  magnetism 
for  me,  he  might  have  every  other 
quality  given  to  mortal,  and  he 
would  not  attract  my  passing  inter 
est.  Well,  I  could  not  find  any 
thing  in  any  one  of  them  to  get  hold 
of.  One  cannot  love  a  clever 
mind,  nor  personal  magnetism, 
nor  a  charming  trick  of  manner, 
nor  a  kind  heart ;  nor  all.  There 
is  something  else.  One  hates  to 
be  sentimental,  but  I  suppose 
what  those  men  have  lacked  is  souL 
Our  men  don't  seem  to  have  time 
for  that.  It  isn't  in  the  make-up 
of  this  country.  Perhaps  I  haven't 
it ;  but,  at  all  events,  I  have  a  men 
tal  conception  of  it,  and  know  that 
it  is  what  1  want." 

Clive  puffed  at  his  pipe  for  a  mo 
ment. 


90  a  Wbirt  BsunDer. 

"  Are  you  talking  pretty  non 
sense,"  he  asked,  "  or  do  you  mean 
that?" 

She  turned  her  head  away  an 
grily. 

"  You  are  just  like  other  men/* 
she  said.  "  I  have  always  been 
laughed  or  stared  at  by  every  man  I 
have  ever  had  the  courage  to  broach 
the  subject  to.  I  was  a  fool  to 
speak  to  you.  It  is  two  or  three 
years  since  I  let  myself  go  like  this." 

"  I  am  not  laughing.  It  is  a  very 
serious  subject  :  the  most  serious  in 
life.  Girls  and  men  and  minor 
poets  are  always  prating  of  it,  but 
it  is  a  good  subject  to  keep  quiet 
about  until  you  understand  it." 

"  Don't  you  think  I  understand 
it?" 

"  I  think  you  will  some  time — yes, 
•certainly.  And  you  had  better  not 
marry  Mr.  Van  Rhuys." 

"  We  are  so  new,"  she  said,  lean- 


a  TKHbirl  BsunDer,  91 

ing  her  elbows  on  her  knees,  her 
chin  on  her  clasped  hands.  "  It 
is  as  if  the  Almighty  had  flung  a 
lot  of  brilliant  particles  together, 
which  cohered  symmetrically,  and 
so  quickly  that  the  spiritual  essence 
of  the  universe  had  no  time  to  crawl 
inside.  I  stayed  here  last  winter 
by  myself  trying  to  solve  the  prob 
lem  of  life,  but  I  only  addled  my 
brain.  I  read  and  read  and  read, 
and  thought  and  thought  and 
thought,  and  in  the  end  I  felt  sad 
der,  but  not  wiser." 

"  You  can't  find  it  alone." 
She  flushed,  and  he  saw  her  eyes 
deepen. 

"  Then  Schuyler  Van  Rhuys 
turned  up,  and  I  concluded  that  the 
best  thing  I  could  do  was  to  go  to 
New  York  and  cut  a  dash  in  the 
smart  set.  And  he  is  such  a  good 
fellow.  He  would  fight  superbly  if 
there  were  a  war ;  he  would  carry 


92  a  "Qdblrl  H0un&er. 

me  safely  out  of  a  mob  ;  he  would 
always  be  kind,  and  in  a  manner 
companionable,  for  he  is  well  up  on 
affairs  and  current  art  and  literature. 
I  should  like  you  to  know  him,  for 
he  is  one  of  the  best  types  of  Amer 
ican  you  will  ever  meet.  But — 
there  is  nothing  else.  And  I  am 
the  stronger  of  the  two.  There  is 
nothing  as  solitary  as  that." 

"  Don't  marry  him.  You  have  no 
excuse — at  your  age  and  with  your 
brain.  Wait  until  you  find  the  right 
man,  even  if  it  is  a  million  years 
hence." 

"Oh,  I've  heard  that "  She 

paused  abruptly.  "  It  isn't  like  you 
to  talk  exaggerated  nonsense.  What 
did  you  mean  by  that  last  ?  " 

"  What  I  said." 

Her  lip  curled.  "You  don't  mean 
to  say  that  you  believe  in  a  life 
after  this — you." 

"Why  not?" 


a  "Cdbirl  BsunDer*  93 

"Well,  do  explain." 

"  I  don't  see  why  any  belief  of  mine 
should  interest  you." 

"  But  it  does.     Tell  me  !  " 

"  This  is  not  my  hour  for  lecturing. 
I'd  much  rather  talk  about  you." 

"  Oh,  please  don't  be  unhumanly 
modest.  Go  on,  you've  roused  my 
curiosity  now,  and  I  will  know  what 
you  think." 

"Very  well.  Not  being  an  un 
reasoning  oyster,  I  believe  in  a  future 
state.  Not  in  the  old-fashioned 
business,  of  course  ;  but  if  a  man  has 
ever  thought,  and  if  he  has  had  two 
or  three  generations  of  thinking  an 
cestors  behind  him,  he  hardly  be 
lieves  that  the  scheme  of  creation 
is  so  purposeless  as  to  turn  people 
of  progressive  development  loose 
on  one  unsatisfactory  plane,  only." 
Clive  spoke  rapidly  when  he  spoke 
at  length,  but  paused  abruptly  every 
now  and  again,  then  resumed  with- 


94          B  TUftbitl  2l0un&et. 

out  impulsion.  "  What  would  be  the 
object  ?  What  meaning  ?  Every 
thing  else  in  the  scheme  of  creation 
has  a  meaning,  leads  to  something 
definite.  .  .  .  That  is  the  signifi 
cance  of  the  lack  of  soul  you 
search  for  in  a  race  of  men  that 
have  not  yet  had  time  to  develop 
it — who  are  yet  surely  progressing 
toward  such  a  consummation.  ... 
On  this  earth  it  takes  generations  of 
leisure,  of  art,  of  literature,  of 
science,  but  mainly  of  individual 
thinking,  to  develop  the  subtle  com 
bination  which  puts  man  in  relation 
with  the  divine  principle  in  the  uni 
verse.  The  pre-eminent  develop 
ment  of  England  over  all  other  na 
tions  is  as  indisputable  as  it  is  natu 
ral.  What  would  be  the  object  of 
such  mental  and  spiritual  develop 
ment  if  this  incomplete  life  of  ours 
were  all  ?  We  go  on  afterward,  of 
course  ;  ascending  by  slow  and 


a  Tiabirl  BeunDer.  95 

laborious  evolution,  from   plane   to 
plane." 

"  And  about  the  other  thing  > 
You  believe  that  in  one  existence  or 
another  you  meet  the  person  who 
satisfies  you  in  all  things — your 
other  part  ? " 

"  Perhaps  two  in  a  century  meet 
in  this  existence.  But  most  of  us 
don't — for  centuries.  Perhaps  mill 
ions  of  centuries.  Time  is  nothing. 
Your  man  may  not  be  born  here  for 
several  centuries — but  you  will  find 
him  some  time.  And  when  you  do, 
you  and  he  will  become  biunial — 
one  in  a  sense  that  I  believe  passes 
all  understanding  here — except,  per 
haps,  that  of  the  one  or  two  fortu 
nate  ones  of  each  century  or  so.  ... 
The  ancients  had  some  such  idea 
when  they  took  Eve  out  of  Adam." 

Helena  rose  and  went  to  the  edge 
of  the  creek.  She  stood  there  with 
out  speaking  for  ten  minutes,  kick- 


96  B  TWlbicl  HsunDcr. 

ing  stones  down  into  the  water. 
Then  she  turned  about. 

"  I  have  always  looked  upon  that 
sort  of  thing  as  poetical  rot,"  she 
said  ;  "  beneath  the  consideration  of 
anyone  of  the  higher  order  of  intel 
ligence  ;  probably  because  in  this 
country,  particularly  in  this  State, 
everything  occult,  except  religion, 
and  sometimes  that,  is  enveloped 
fifteen  times  over  in  vulgar  and 
mercenary  fraud.  Even  v/ell  written 
treatises  on  such  subjects  have 
never  interested  me — my  American 
intolerance  of  anything  which  can 
not  be  demonstrated,  I  suppose. 
But  if  a  man  like  you  believes,  it 
makes  one  think." 

She  came  and  sat  close  beside  him 
on  the  log,  her  gown  brushing  his 
feet. 

"  It  is  true "  she  began. 

"  This  is  hardly  fair,  you  know," 
said  Clive. 


B  "Qdbirl  asunfcer,  97 

"  What  ? " 

"  You  know  as  well  as  I  do.  If  I 
am  not  to  make  love  to  you — and  in 
a  way  you  have  placed  me  on  my 
honor — go  and  sit  at  the  other  end 
of  the  log." 

"  Pshaw  !  After  what  you  have 
just  said,  you  should  be  above  such 
things." 

"  I  am  not  a  spirit  yet,  please  re 
member.  And  I  am  not  by  any 
means  so  highly  developed  as  I  ought 
to  be.  If  you  don't  go  away  I  shall 
take  hold  of  you." 

Helena  went  back  to  her  former 
position. 

"  The  Delilah  becomes  you,"  he 
pursued,  "  until  one  realizes  that  it  is 
not  you  at  all.  You  look  the  most 
womanly  of  women  now  that  you 
have  forgot,  en  you  brought  me  here 
to  make  a  fool  of  me " 

"  I  did  not  !  Indeed,  I  did  not. 
I  brought  you  here  because  I  wanted 


98  a  Wbirl 

to  talk  to  you  in  this  forest,  and  be 
cause  the  moment  I  saw  you  I  recog 
nized  something  in  you  that  I  have 
found  in  no  other  man." 

"  You  take  great  risks,  Miss  Bel- 
mont ;  I  should  seize  and  kiss  you 
after  that  remark,  and  you  know  it. 
To-morrow  you  will  think  me  an  ass 
because  I  did  not,  and  I  am." 

"  I  want  to  talk  some  more  about 
that  other  thing.  I  thought,  as  I 
stood  by  the  creek,  of  our  literature. 
Has  it  occurred  to  you  that  no  Amer 
ican  author  has  ever  written  a  genu 
ine  all-round  love  scene  ?  They  are 
either  thin  or  sensual,  almost  invari 
ably  the  former.  The  soul  and  pas 
sion  of  the  older  races  they  have 
never  developed.  If  a  woman  writer 
breaks  out  wildly  sometimes,  she 
merely  voices  the  lack  we  all  feel  in 
this  section  of  the  world — in  life  as 
well  as  in  literature.  That  explains 
why  I  have  tried  to  care  for  eight 


B  Wbitl  aaunDer*  99 

clever    and    interesting    men    and 
turned  away  chilled." 

"You  must  love  an  Englishman," 
said  Clive,  smiling.  "  If  you  notice, 
a  good  many  American  women  do. 
An  Englishwoman  never  marries  an 
American.  It  goes  to  prove  what 
I  said  a  little  while  ago  :  leisure  is 
needed  for  development;  conse-, 
quently  the  women  of  America  have 
developed  far  more  rapidly  than 
the  men." 

"  Don't  imagine  for  a  moment 
that  I  am  disparaging  my  own  coun 
try,"  said  Helena  hurriedly;  "I  am 
the  best  American  in  the  world — 
I  wouldn't  be  anything  else  ;  and  I 
like  and  admire  our  men  for  their 
cleverness  and  pluck  and  wonder 
ful  go-aheadness.  But  I  will  con 
fide  to  you  something  that  I  have 
never  told  a  living  soul — I  have 
such  a  contempt  for  the  Angloma- 
niac  that  I  have  a  horror  of  being 


ioo          a  Wbfrl  asunder. 

taken  for  one.  It  is  this  :  some 
thing  English  in  me  has  survived 
through  five  generations.  I  was 
brought  up  in  a  library  of  English 
literature ;  perhaps  that  fostered 
it.  As  long  as  I  merely  read  and 
studied  I  lived  in  imagination 
among  English  scenes  and  people 
— the  people  of  your  history  and 
those  created  by  your  authors  and 
poets.  Something  in  me  responded 
to  every  line  that  I  read  ;  I  felt 
at  home  ;  singularly  enough  much 
more  so  than  when  I  finally  visited 
England.  Until  a  few  years  ago  I 
could  not  force  myself  to  read 
American  literature — with  the  sole 
exception  of  Bret  Harte.  It  is  so 
cold,  so  slight,  so  forbidding.  It  is 
the  piano  of  letters.  Now,  of 
course,  I  appreciate  the  mentality 
in  it  and  the  delicate  art,  the  light 
rapid  sketches  of  passing  phases. 
And  it  seems  to  me  that  before  we 


H  Molrl  Sfcunfcer*          101 

produce  a  Shakspere  or  Byron  we 
shall  have  to  relapse  into  barbarism, 
and  emerge  and  develop  by  slow 
and  sure  stages  to  the  condition  of 
England  when  she  evolved  her 
great  men.  We  have  gone  ahead 
too  fast  to  ever  become  great 
from  our  present  beginnings  ;  we 
are  all  brilliant  shallows  and  no 
depths." 

"  You  disprove  a  good  deal  that 
you  say." 

Helena  bent  forward,  pressing 
her  chin  hard  into  the  palm  of  her 
hand.  She  had  forgotten  that  she 
was  a  beautiful  woman,  but  even  so 
she  was  graceful. 

"  If  we  Californians  have  a 
stronger  fibre  and  richer  blood  in  us 
than  other  Americans,"  she  replied, 
"  it  is  because  we  are  cruder,  sav- 
ager,  close  to  nature.  I  do  things 
that  no  Eastern  girl  in  the  same  so 
cial  position  would  even  think  of 


io2  a  IKlbirl 

doing,  much  less  dare  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  I  have  a  better  chance 
of  getting  what  I  want  out  of  life, 
for  I  go  straight  for  it,  undeterred 
by  any  traditions  or  scruples.  And 
I  have  more  to  give." 

She  paused  and  Clive  filled  and  lit 
another  pipeful  of  tobacco. 

"  You  take  great  satisfaction  out 
of  that  pipe,''  she  said  pettishly. 

"  It  is  my  only  safeguard." 

She  laughed  and  he  could  see  her 
flush. 

"  I  suppose  that  English  some 
thing  in  me,  which  has  survived, 
was  what  sprang  so  instantly  to  you 
— recognition." 

"You  have  been  in  England,  and 
you  have  met  many  Englishmen." 

"  I  have  liked  some  of  them  tre 
mendously,  although  I  never  would 
admit  it,  and  always  bullyragged 
them  ;  that  mixture  of  subtlety  and 
brutality  is  very  attractive.  But 


8.  TWlbirl  HsunDet.          103 

it  was  not  the  same — not  by  any 
means." 

"  You  force  me  to  repeat  that 
you  take  very  great  risks." 

"No,  no,"  she  said  plaintively. 
"  How  could  I  ?  I  am  not  what 
you  imagined  me.  But  I  must  stay 
here  and  talk  to  you." 

They  talked  until  the  night 
turned  grey,  drifting  no  more 
toward  personalities.  Then  Clive 
looked  at  his  watch. 

"  Do  you  know  what  time  it  is  ?  M 

"  I  do  not  in  the  least  care." 

"  It  is  three  o'clock.  And  I  can 
see  that  you  are  tired.  Come  !  " 

She  rose  and  he  jerked  her  shawl 
across  her  chest  and  threw  one 
end  over  her  shoulder.  "What  a 
silly  child  you  are  to  come  out 
with  that  bare  neck.  Aren't  yott 
chilled?" 

She  smiled  up  at  him  as  grate- 


io4          B  Wbirl  Baun&er. 

fully  as  if  unused  to  the  tender  care 
of  man. 

They  went  down  the  mountain 
without  further  conversation ;  it 
was  very  dark  and  steep  ;  a  mis 
step  might  have  sent  one  or  both 
headlong. 

The  house  was  without  lights  ; 
even  the  lanterns  on  the  corridors 
had  burned  out.  As  they  entered 
the  court  a  man  rose  from  a  long 
chair,  yawning  and  stretching  him 
self.  It  was  Charley  Rollins. 

"My  God,  Helena!"  he  ex 
claimed,  "  this  is  going  too  far. 
You  know  that  all  of  us  who  know 
you  swear  by  you,  but  you  can't  do 
this  sort  of  thing  with  such  women 
as  Mrs.  Volney  and  Harriet  Lord  in 
the  house.  Sitting  up  all  night  un 
der  a  tree  in  full  view  of  all  Del 
Monte  is  one  thing,  but  the  middle 
of  a  forest,  where  you  have  never 
taken  a  man  in  the  daytime  before 


B  TKHbfrl  Beunoet.          105 

— for  heaven's  sake,  my  dear  child, 
have  a  care." 

He  ended  rather  feebly  ;  for  Hel 
ena  had  brought  down  her  foot  and 
thrown  back  her  head  with  flashing 
eyes.  "  I  shall  do  exactly  what  I 
choose  to  do,"  she  cried.  "And  I 
hope  Amy  Volney  and  Harriet 
Lord  have  their  heads  out  of  their 
doors  this  minute.  What  business 
is  it  of  yours,  I  should  like  to  know  ? 
How  dare  you  take  me  to  task  ? 
Take  Mr.  Clive  over  to  the  dining- 
room,  and  give  him  some  brandy, 
and  then  go  home  ;  or  stay  all 
night  if  you  choose  ;  there  are  two- 
empty  rooms  at  the  corner.  Good 
night,  Mr.  Clive."  And  without 
taking  further  notice  of  Rollins  she 
crossed  over  to  the  opposite  corri 
dor  and  disappeared. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

CLIVE  and  Rollins  exchanged  few 
words  on  the  drive  home.  Miss 
Belmont's  name  was  not  mentioned, 
dive's  feelings  were  mixed.  He 
candidly  admitted  that  his  vanity 
was  profoundly  at  peace  with  it 
self,  and  that  Helena  Belmont  was 
the  most  interesting  woman  he  had 
ever  met.  Nevertheless,  his  con 
science  chattered  at  his  vanity  like 
an  angry  monkey  at  a  peacock. 

"  I  feel  exactly  like  a  delinquent 
husband,"  he  thought.  "  Premoni 
tory,  I  suppose.  I  have  an  absurdly 
married  feeling ;  the  result  of  a 
long  engagement,  probably,  and  a 
lifelong  acquaintance.  ...  I  won 
der  if  a  man  ever  bothers  if  the 


B  TKflbttl  2l9unDer,  107 

woman  is  not  likely  to  find  him 
j  out  ;  I  can't  say  it  has  ever  worried 
me  much  before.  I  suppose  it's  on 
the  principle  that  what  a  woman 
doesn't  know  won't  hurt  her." 

Then  he  wondered  if  he  would 
have  sat  up  all  night  with  another 
woman  had  he  been  engaged  to 
Helena  Belmont. 

He  made  his  confession  three 
days  later,  when  Mary  was  fully 
recovered. 

She  smiled  a  little  sadly,  the  smile 
which  seems  to  belong  to  the  lips 
of  such  women,  fashioned  to  be 
good  wives  and  mothers,  and  noth 
ing  more.  She  put  up  her  hand  and 
touched  his  hair  shyly  ;  she  seldom 
caressed  him. 

"  She  is  always  sitting  up  alt  night 
with  some  one  or  other.  It  seems 
to  be  a  fad  of  hers.  And  you  know 
I  trust  you  absolutely."  (He  had 
the  grace  to  blush.)  "  But,  I  think, 


io8         a  "CClbirl  asun&er. 

if  you  don't  mind,  that  I'll  announce 
the  engagement." 

"Why,  of  course  I  don't  mind," 
he  said,  taken  aback.  "  It  was 
your  idea  to  keep  it  quiet,  not  mine.'* 

"  Yes  ;  but  I  think  I'd  like  her  to 
know." 

As  Clive  left  the  cottage  he  met 
Rollins. 

"  I  have  something  to  tell  you, 
old  chap,"  he  said  awkwardly.  "  I 
want  you  to  congratulate  me.  I 
am  engaged  to  Miss  Gordon." 

"  The  devil  you  are  !  "  exclaimed 
Rollins  slapping  him  vigorously  on 
the  back,  "  I  do  congratulate  you, 
old  fellow,  she'e  a  jewel  of  a  girl. 
Going  to  marry  here  ?  " 

"  Yes,  in  San  Francisco." 

"  The  club  will  give  you  a  send- 
off  the  night  before.  You  won't 
look  as  handsome  on  your  wedding- 
morn  as  you  otherwise  might,  and 
you'll  have  a  dark  brown  taste  in 


&  TIClbtrl  Hsimfcec.  109 

your  mouth,  but  in  a  long  period  of 
domestic  bliss  you'll  have  a  great 
joy  to  look  back  upon." 

They  walked  down  to  the  camp 
together,  then  Rollins  left  abruptly 
and  returning  to  Yorba  went  to  the 
telephone  office. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

HELENA  BELMONT  saw  little  of  her 
company  for  two  days.  She  spent 
part  of  the  time  in  the  forest,  the 
rest  in  her  boudoir,  a  long  room  on 
the  east  side  of  the  house  opening 
into  her  bedroom  at  one  end  and 
into  a  small  library  at  the  other. 
The  bedroom  was  a  pretty  thing  of 
pale  pink  and  green,  and  white  lace. 
The  library,  lined  from  floor  to  ceil 
ing  with  books,  many  several  gener 
ations  old,  had  only  a  rug  on  the 
bare  floor,  a  table  and  several  up 
right  chairs.  The  walls  of  the  bou 
doir  were  panelled  with  the  beautiful- 
delicately-veined  redwood  the  for 
est  trees  conceal  under  their  forbid 
ding  bark.  The  ceiling  was  arched 


B  "Odbirl  asunder*  m 

and  heavily  beamed.  The  curtains 
of  doors  and  windows,  the  deep 
chairs  and  couches,  the  rugs  on  the 
dark  floor  were  of  Smyrna  stuffs 
whose  only  tangible  color  was  a  red 
that  was  almost  black.  A  redwood 
mantel  was  built  to  the  ceiling;  a 
large  table  of  the  same  wood,  heav 
ily  carved,  was  covered  with  books 
and  costly  trifles.  The  deep  win 
dow  seats  were  also  upholstered. 
The  Castilian  roses  nodded  against 
the  pane,  but  Helena  could  look 
above  the  garden  wall  into  the  for 
est  on  the  mountain. 

And  here  Helena  sat  for  hours. 
She  was  profoundly  stirred  and 
touching  lightly  the  keys  of  some 
thing  akin  to  happiness.  Several 
times  before  in  her  life  she  had  felt 
what  she  believed  to  be  the  quicken 
ing  of  love  ;  but  it  had  died  in  its 
swaddling  clothes,  and  had  been  a 
vagary  of  the  fancy  to  this.  Her 


ii2  a  THlbirl 


brain  and  her  woman's  instinct  told 
her  unerringly  that  she  had  found  the 
man.  Every  part  of  her  went  out  to 
him.  A  faint  sweet  something  tipped 
her  pulses.  It  is  possible  that 
passion  was  regnant  at  this  time; 
that  she  was  possessed  by  the  savage 
primitive  desire  of  the  first  woman 
for  the  first  man  ;  so  far  she  had 
come  in  contact  with  little  beyond 
the  man's  powerful  personality  and 
responsive  magnetism.  Neverthe 
less  there  had  been  spiritual  recogni 
tion,  blind  and  groping  as  it  may 
have  been  ;  certain  torpid  instincts 
stirred,  and  she  divined  vaguely 
what  a  woman  might  be  to  her  hus 
band.  She  had  known  many  mar 
ried  women  more  or  less  intimately, 
been  the  confidante  of  more  than 
one  liaison  ;  and  with  intuition  fos 
tered  by  such  knowledge  and  her 
own  strong  brain,  she  rejoiced  that 
she  had  met  him  in  time,  divining 


a  Wbirl  BmmDer.  113 

something  of  the  bitter  sadness 
which  companions  a  woman,  who, 
meeting  a  man  too  late,  must  be 
one  thing  to  him,  instead  of 
twenty  :  his  wife  would  still  have 
the  better  part  of  his  life,  his  higher 
nature,  his  duty,  the  supreme  happi 
ness  of  making  his  home. 

She  dreamed  dreams  of  her  future 
with  Clive  :  the  love  and  the  art  by 
which  she  would  hold  him,  the  com 
panionship.  She  forgot  Mary  Gor 
don's  existence.  Had  she  remem 
bered,  she  would  have  imperiously 
dismissed  the  very  thought  of  her. 
She  had  obtained  what  she  wanted 
all  her  life,  and  recognized  no 
obstacles. 

She  went  up  to  the  log  by  the 
creek  and  touched  caressingly  the 
tree  against  which  he  had  leaned, 
gathered  some  of  the  ashes  from  his 
pipe  and  held  them  in  the  hollow  of 
her  hand.  She  smiled  as  she  did  so, 


H4          B  lUflbtrl  BsunOet. 

and  wondered  that  clever  women 
and  silly  women  should  be  so  little 
dissimilar  when  in  love. 

It  was  on  the  morning  of  the  third 
day  that  the  Chinese  butler  tapped 
at  her  door,  and  said — 

"  Mr.  Lollins  wantee  you  at  tele 
phone,  missee." 

"  Oh,  tell  somebody  else  to  ans 
wer  him.  I  am  tired  of  the  very 
sound  of  that  telephone.  Someone 
is  at  it  all  day.  I've  a  great  mind  to 
have  it  taken  out." 

"  Allight,  missee." 

A  few  moments  later  he  returned. 

"  Mr.  Lollins  slay  he  got  some 
thing  velly  important  tellee  missee." 

Helena  went  rapidly  to  the  little 
room  by  the  front  door  sacred  to 
the  telephone.  The  fear  shook  her 
that  something  had  happened  to 
Clive. 

She  sat  down  by  the  table  and 
rang  the  bell. 


B  XUbtrl  BsunDcr.  115 

«  Halloo  !  "  she  said  faintly. 

"  Halloo,  Helena  !  is  that  you  ?  " 
came  Rollins'  hearty,  reassuring 
voice. 

"  Yes.  What  do  you  want  ?  I 
wish  you  wouldn't  bother  me." 

"  Awfully  sorry  ,  but  I've  a  piece 
of  news  for  you — a  corker." 

"Well." 

"  It's  about  your  Englishman." 

"My  Englishman?  What  Eng 
lishman  ?  What  nonsense  are  you 
talking  ? " 

"  Oh,  come  off.  I've  terrible 
news  for  you.  I've  just  congratu 
lated  him.  He's  mortgaged." 

"I  wish  you  would  not  talk  slang 
over  the  telephone.  I  suppose  you 
mean  he's  engaged  to  Mary  Gor 
don." 

"That's  the  hard  cold  fact." 

"Well,  please  congratulate  them 
for  me.  I'll  give  them  a  dinner. 
I'll  write  a  note  to-day " 


n6  B  Wbirl  asunDcr. 

"  You'll  see  him  to-night.  I  hope 
you  haven't  forgotten  that  you  are 
all  to  dine  with  us." 

"  I  had  forgotten  it,  but  we'll  be 
there." 

"  Great  Scott,  Helena  !  have  you 
also  forgotten  that  this  is  our  last 
night,  and  that  you  asked  six  of  us 
to  spend  a  week  with  you  ?  Are 
those  boys  still  there  ?" 

"They  are;  but  I'll  send  them 
home  this  minute.  I'm  awfully 
sorry  I  forgot  it,  but  everything 
will  be  ready  for  you.  I'll  send  a 
wagon  over  for  your  traps  this 
afternoon,  and  the  char-a-banc  will 
bring  you  back  to-night.  Now, 
clear  out,  I  have  a  great  deal  to  at 
tend  to." 

Helena  replaced  the  trumpet 
carefully  in  its  bracket,  then  leaned 
her  elbows  on  the  table  and  laughed. 
The  one  sensation  of  which  she  was 
definitely  conscious  for  the  moment 


B  TKabicI  asun&er.          n/ 

was  genuine  amusement.  She  re 
called  her  dreams,  her  pictured  life 
with  Clive,  and  felt  a  fool  ;  but  she 
had  always  been  able  to  laugh  at 
herself,  and  she  did  so  now.  In  a 
little  while  she  went  into  the  corri 
dors,  where  the  guests  were  dawd 
ling  after  their  morning  drive. 

"  Mes  enfants"  she  said,  blowing 
a  kiss  from  the  tips  of  her  fingers  to 
each  of  the  young  men  in  turn,  "  go 
straightway  and  pack  up.  You  are 
to  go  home  on  the  4.10.  I  asked,  a 
week  ago,  six  of  the  club  men  to 
come  here  to-night,  and  you  must 
vacate.  And,  what  do  you  think  ? 
My  Englishman  is  engaged  to  Mary 
Gordon." 

She  ruffled  her  hair  with  a  tragic 
little  gesture,  threw  up  her  hands 
and  disappeared. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  humor 
died  out  of  her.  In  its  wake  came 
the  profoundest  depression  she 


n8  a  TWlbtrl  BsunOcr. 

had  ever  known.  She  looked  into 
a  blank  and  colorless  future,  real 
izing  that  a  woman  may  be  young 
until  fifty  if  it  is  still  her  privilege 
to  seek  and  wait  and  hope,  but  that 
when  her  great  joy  has  touched  and 
passed  her,  she  has  buried  all  that 
is  best  of  her  youth. 

She  could  not  stay  in  her  rooms, 
eloquent  of  imaginings,  but  went 
back  to  her  guests,  and  clung  to 
them  and  talked  of  what  interested 
them,  and  had  never  been  more  hos 
pitable  and  charming  ;  all  the  while 
mechanically  counting  the  years  and 
months  and  days  that  lay  ahead  of 
her.  The  depression  lasted  for 
hours,  during  which  she  wondered 
if  the  weight  in  her  brain  was  crush 
ing  the  light  and  reason  out  of  it. 

And  then  the  devil  entered  into 
her. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  girls  in  their  gayest  muslin 
frocks,  chaperoned  by  the  more 
sedate  Mrs.  Cartwright,  arrived  at 
the  camp  at  seven.  A  long  table 
was  spread  under  the  redwoods 
near  the  bank  of  the  little  river,  in 
whose  falls  bottles  lay  cooling. 
Clive  was  the  only  other  guest. 
Mary  Gordon  had  been  asked  ;  but 
although  she  had  accepted  with 
philosophy  much  that  was  Cali- 
fornian,  the  informalities  of  the 
Bohemian  Club  were  more  than 
she  could  stand.  Clive  had  been 
begged  to  go  alone  and  to  stay 
as  late  as  he  liked. 

Helena  wore  a  pink  muslin  frock, 
her  hair  in  a  loose  braid.  Her  eyes 


120          B  Wbirl  BsunDer. 

were  dancing.  She  looked  like  a 
naughty  child,  and  chattered  clever 
nonsense,  apparently  in  the  highest 
of  spirits. 

An  impromptu  band  played  softly 
out  of  sight  ;  one  could  hear  the 
splashing  of  the  river  and  the  faint 
music  of  the  redwoods.  Chinese 
lanterns,  suspended  in  a  row  over 
the  table,  and  from  the  young  red 
woods,  gave  abundant  light.  It  was 
a  very  informal  dinner.  The  men 
wore  flannel  shirts,  smoked  when  it 
pleased  them,  and  assumed  any  at 
titude  conducive  to  comfort.  Clive 
tipped  back  his  chair  against  a  tree, 
and  felt  that  it  was  his  duty  to  re 
joice  that  Mary  was  not  present. 
Every  man  waited  on  himself  and 
on  the  guests  of  honor.  Helena,  at 
the  head  of  the  table,  had  the  one 
servant  constantly  at  her  elbow. 
It  was  her  tendency  to  spoil  the 
men  she  liked,  and  she  encouraged 


B  TKflbirl  asun&er.          121 

her  Bohemians  in  all  their  trans 
gressions  ;  which  was  one  of  the 
many  reasons  why  they  liked  her 
better  than  any  woman  in  California. 

A  course  not  pleasing  her  taste, 
she  called  for  her  guitar  and  sang 
for  them  a  rollicking  song  of  the 
bull-fight.  Clive  leaned  forward  on 
the  table  and  watched  her :  her 
nostrils  expanded  as  if  they  had  the 
scent  of  blood  in  them  ;  she  curled 
her  lips  under,  clicking  her  teeth. 
Her  eyes  had  not  wandered  to  Clive 
since,  upon  entering  the  camp,  she 
had  prettily  congratulated  him. 

"  Helena,  you  alarm  me,"  said 
Rollins  mildly,  when  she  finished. 
"  I  haven't  seen  you  look  as 
wicked  as  you  do  to-night  for  sev 
eral  years.  You  would  give  a 
stranger,  Mr.  Clive  for  instance,  the 
impression  that  you  were  a  cruel 
little  demon,  as  you  sing  that  song. 
Of  course  we  know  that  only  heaven 


122          B  THflbirl  BsunDec. 

in  its  infinite  mercy  lends  you  to  us 
fora  little." 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Clive  !  "  said  Helena  in 
a  weary  tone,  but  with  a  suspicious 
alertness  of  eye,  "  I  had  such  a 
funny  experience  with  Mr.  Clive, 
the  other  night.  I  think  I'll  have 
to  tell  it."  She  threw  back  her 
head  and  laughed  infectiously  : 
"  Oh,  it  was  so  funny  !  " 

Clive  experienced  an  uncomforta 
ble  thrill.  The  others  gave  her  im 
mediate  attention. 

"  Don't  hesitate  to  tell  us,  Hel 
ena,"  said  Rollins.  "We  will  keep 
your  confidence.  And  have  mercy 
on  our  curiosity  ;  that  adjective  is 
so  vague." 

Helena  leaned  forward,  and  clasp 
ing  her  hand  about  her  chin,  looked 
at  the  company  with  dancing  eyes. 

"  Probably  you  all  know,"  she 
said,  "  that  not  long  since  I  spent 
five  hours  in  the  forest  alone  with 


B  Tttflbtrl  BeunOcr.          123 

Mr.  Clive,  talking  in  the  midnight 
hour.  Wei*,  you  don't  know  that 
Mr.  Clive  had  previously  told  me  that 
if  he  ever  sat  up  all  night  with  me 
he  should  kiss  me,  and  several  times  ; 
so  when  I  took  him  to  the  loneliest 
spot  I  knew,  the  intimation  was 
that  I  expected  him  to  do  justice  to 
his  principles,  wasn't  it  ?  " 

"  It  was,  Helena,"  said  Rollins, 
with  an  attempt  at  facetiousness, 
"and  I  hope  he  did.  Served  you 
right." 

"Well,  he  did  not!  And  I  sat 
not  three  feet  away  from  him  for 
five  hours,  and  never  looked  better. 
How  do  you  suppose  I  bluffed  him 
off?" 

"Oh,  come  Helena!"  said  Rol 
lins,  who  was  beginning  to  feel 
sorry  for  Clive. 

"  You  know,"  she  continued, 
tossing  her  head  and  tapping  her 
foot,  much  like  a  spirited  race-horse, 


124          B  lObirl  BsunOer* 

"  I  have  always  said  I  could  do  ex 
actly  as  I  pleased  with  a  man,  and  I 
can.  So  it  pleased  me  to  play  chess 
with  an  Englishman,  whose  only 
idea  of  the  game  is  to  jump  over 
the  board.  Well,  first  I  mildly  re 
monstrated  with  him  ;  then  we  ar 
gued  the  matter,  quite  coolly,  for 
he  smoked  his  pipe,  and  English 
men  are  usually  cool,  you  know. 
My  powers  of  persuasion  were  not 
very  effective.  Then  I  told  him 
that  I  was  engaged.  But  as  he  was, 
too,  he  could  not  see  the  force  of 
my  remark.  Well,  you'd  never 
guess  in  the  wide  world  what  I  did 
then.  I  gently  led  him  off  on  to 
the  subject  of  religion,  and  he 
preached  until  three  o'clock,  and 
forgot  all  about  wanting  to  kiss  me. 
Now,  I  call  that  sort  of  a  man  a 
duffer  !  "  (with  an  affected  drawl.) 
44  What  do  you  think  about  it?" 
There  was  an  intense  and  uncom- 


a  Wbtrl  BsunDer,  125 

fortable  silence.  Then  Clive 
pushed  back  his  chair  abruptly. 
He  walked  straight  up  to  Helena, 
lifted  her  from  her  seat,  pinioned 
her  arms,  and  kissed  her  while  one 
could  count  thirty. 

The  men  sprang  to  their  feet. 
Their  sympathies  were  with  Clive, 
but  she  was  their  guest,  and  a 
woman  ;  they  would  do  whatever 
she  commanded. 

Clive  dropped  her  into  her  chair, 
not  too  gently. 

"  Sit  down,  gentlemen,"  she  said 
serenely  ;  "  we  will  now  go  on  with 
the  dinner." 


CHAPTER  X. 

MR.  VAN  RHUYS  returned  the  next 
morning.  Helena  and  several  of  her 
guests  drove  over  to  the  hotel  station 
to  meet  him.  The  train  was  not  due 
for  some  moments  after  their  arri 
val.  Helena  sprang  from  the  char- 
a-banc  and  ran  up  the  hill  to  the 
Gordon  cottage.  Clive  and  Mary 
came  out  to  meet  her. 

**  I  didn't  want  to  write  you  a 
formal  note  of  congratulation,  Miss 
Gordon,"  she  said,  smiling  charm 
ingly.  "  I  hoped  to  see  you  last 
night  at  the  dinner.  I  am  so  sorry 
you  were  not  there.  It  was  a  most 
interesting  dinner." 

"So   Mr.  Clive    told    me,"     said 


a  Wbirl  Bsunfcer.          127 

Mary  innocently.  "  You  are  very 
kind,  dear  Miss  Belmont." 

"I  want  to  give  you  a  dinner. 
To-morrow  ?  I  must  be  quick.  I 
hear  my  train.  Do  say  yes." 

"  I  am  so  sorry,  thank  you  so 
mwch,  but  papa  and  I  are  going  to 
San  Francisco  to-morrow  afternoon. 
He  has  business,  and  my  dress 
maker  wants  me.  After  that  we 
are  going  to  pay  three  visits  in  San 
Mateo  and  Menlo  Park  ;  we  hoped 
to  get  out  of  them,  but  it  seems  we 
can't,  and  papa  thinks  I'd  better 

g«." 

"  Oh  !  "  said  Helena.  "  What 
are  you  going  to  do  with  Mr. 
Clive  ? " 

"That  is  the  question.  Of 
course  he  will  be  asked  too,  as  soon 
as  they  know,  but  he  hates  the 
thought  of  it.  He  says  he  will  stay 
in  San  Francisco,  and  run  down  and 
see  me  occasionally,  but  I  hate  to 


»28         a  TKHbirl 

have  him  there  at  this  time  of  the 
year,  with  those  winds  and  fogs.  I 
want  him  to  stay  here  and  be  com 
fortable.  It  is  such  a  rest  for  him 
after  that  long  trip." 

"  Miss  Gordon,  you  are  begin 
ning  badly.  You  will  spoil  him.  I 
should  like  to  marry  an  Englishman 
just  for  the  pleasure  of  bringing 
him  up  in  the  way  he  should  go. 
Suppose  you  leave  him  in  my 
charge.  I  will  take  good  care  of 
him,  and  see  that  he  does  nothing 
but  loaf."  She  turned  to  Clive,  who 
was  staring  at  her,  his  hands  in  his 
pockets,  his  lips  together. 

"  Come  over  and  stay  at  Casa 
Norte.  You  know  all  the  men,  and 
they  will  love  to  have  you." 

"Oh,  do,  Owin,"  said  Mary. 
^  They  are  always  so  jolly  there,  aad 
I  shall  feel  much  easier  about  you." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Clive,  "  I  will 
go.  Thank  you." 


B  TKHbirl  SsunDer.          129 

"  I'll  send  over  for  you  in  time  for 
dinner.  Will  that  be  right  ?  Oh,  my 
train  !  my  train  !  What  will  Mr.  Van 
Rhuys  think  of  me  ?  Good-bye, 
Miss  Gordon.  Hasta  luego,  Mr. 
Clive." 

She  ran  down  the  hill  as  a  man 
came  forward  to  meet  her.  He 
was  a  big  well-made  man  with  the 
walk  and  carriage,  the  perfect  ad 
justment  of  clothes  which  distin 
guish  the  fashionable  New  Yorker. 
His  Dutch  ancestry  showed  vaguely 
in  his  face,  which  was  fair  and  large, 
and  roughly  modelled  ;  but  the 
clever  pleasant  eyes  were  American  ; 
the  deep  lines  about  them  betrayed 
an  experience  of  life  which  re 
claimed  the  face  from  any  ten 
dency  to  the  commonplace.  He 
looked  the  rather  bias/  man  of  forty, 
yet  full  of  vitality  and  good-nature, 
and  possessed  of  all  the  brains  he 
would  ever  need. 


J3o         21  Tttflbirl 

His  eyes  deepened  as  he  took 
Helena's  hand. 

"  How  jolly  well  you  look,"  he 
said  with  the  slight  affectation  of 
accent  peculiar  to  the  smart  New 
Yorker.  "  I'm  awfully  glad  to  see 
you  again,  awfully." 

As  the  char-a-banc  drove  off  the 
girls  leaned  out  and  waved  their 
hands  to  Miss  Gordon  and  Clive, 
and  Van  Rhuys  was  told  of  the  en 
gagement. 

"  Good-looking  chap,"  he  said. 

"  Isn't  he  ?  "  said  Helena  enthusi 
astically.  "  I  sat  out  all  night  with 
him,  just  for  the  pleasure  of  looking 
at  him." 

Van  Rhuys  frowned  and  turned 
away.  He  had  wished  more  than 
once  that  Helena  Belmont,  doubly 
fascinating  as  her  unconventionality 
made  her,  had  been  brought  up  in 
New  York.  He  had  had  more  than 
one  spasm  of  premonitory  horror, 


B  IKHbirl  BaunDer.          131 

but  had  reminded  himself  that  none 
knew  better  than  she  how  to  be 
grande  dame  if  she  chose. 

When  they  reached  the  house  he 
went  to  his  room  to  clean  up,  then 
sought  Helena  in  her  boudoir.  She 
was  leaning  over  the  back  of  a  chair, 
tipping  it  nervously. 

"  I  want  to  say  something  right 
away,"  she  said  as  he  closed  the 
door.  "  I  want  you  to  release  me — 
I  cannot  marry  you." 

Van  Rhuys  pressed  his  lips  to 
gether  and  half  closed  his  eyes. 
But  he  merely  asked,  "  What  is  the 
reason  ? " 

"  I  am  going  to  marry  Mr.  Clive." 

"You  are  going  to  do  what?" 
Van  Rhuys'  eyes  opened  very  wide. 
He  understood  Helena  little,  and 
one  of  her  enduring  charms  was  her 
quality  of  the  unexpected.  "Are 
you  speaking  of  the  man  who  is  en 
gaged  to  Miss  Gordon  ?  " 


i32         B  "Cdbfrl  BsunDer. 

"Yes,  that  is  the  man.  I  am  not 
joking." 

"  You  mean  that  you  are  going  to 
tf"  to  cut  that  poor  girl  out  ? " 

"  I  mean  that  I  shall,"  said  Helena 
passionately.  "  He  is  the  only  man 
that  I  have  ever  really  wanted,  and 
I  intend  to  have  him." 

"  It's  a  damned  dishonorable 
thing  to  do." 

"  I  don't  care.  Honor's  nothing 
but  an  arbitrary  thing,  anyhow.  I'll 
have  what  I  want.  It  wasn't  neces 
sary  for  me  to  tell  you  this,  but  it 
does  me  good  to  say  it  to  some 
body." 

"  And  you  don't  care  whether  I 
am  hurt  or  not — nor  that  poor  girl  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  believe  I  do.  I  wish 
I  did.  I  feel  so  wicked — but  I  can't. 
I  can't  care  for  anything  else.  You 
didn't  love  me  very  much,  anyhow. 
You  are  merely  in  love  with  me." 

"  You  never  gave  me  the  chance. 


a  TJdblrl  BsunDer*          133 

I  have  barely  kissed  you.  I  had 
hoped  that  after  a  while,  after  we 
were  married,  it  might  be  different. 
You  hare  fully  made  up  your 
mind?" 

"  All  the  mind  I've  got  is  in  it." 

"Then  I  don't  see  that  there's 
anything  for  me  to  do  but  go.  I 
can't  hang  round  here,  I'll  have  a 
sudden  telegram  calling  me  to  New 
York.  Will  you  shake  hands  ?  " 

She  came  forward  and  gave  him 
her  hand.  "  Have  I  been  unfair?'* 
she  asked,  smiling.  "  I  didn't  have 
time  to  write,  and  at  least  I  didn't 
break  it  off  by  telephone,  as  I  did 
with  one  of  them." 

"  You  have  behaved  with  the  ut 
most  consideration,"  said  Van 
Rhuys  dryly.  He  looked  at  her  a 
moment.  "Suppose  you  fail?"  he 
asked. 

"  Fail  ?  "  she  said  haughtily.  "  I 
never  fail.  There's  nothing  I'll  stop 


134  B  Wbitl  Bsunfcer. 

at — nothing  !  nothing  !  I  always  get 
what  I  want.  I  was  born,  that  way." 
"  I  know  ;  but  there  is  a  pretty 
tough  sort  of  fibre  in  some  English 
men,  and  they  call  it  honor.  Well, 
good  luck  to  you.  And  good-bye  ; 
I  shall  go  on  the  4.10." 


CHAPTER  XI. 

CLIVE  drove  over  the  next  after 
noon.  He  sat  some  distance  from 
Helena  at  dinner,  and  afterward  she 
and  Mrs.  Lent  played  billiards  with 
himself  and  one  of  the  other  men  for 
an  hour  ;  the  rest  of  the  evening  was 
passed  in  the  large  living-room, 
where  Clive  listened  to  better  ama 
teur  music  than  he  had  ever  heard 
before.  Some  little  time  after  the 
women  had  retired,  a  Chinese  ser 
vant  entered  the  dining-room,  where 
the  men  were  drinking  brandy-and- 
soda,  and  said  to  Clive — 

"  Missee  Hellee  wantee  slee  you  in 
bludoir." 

"  What  ?  "  asked  Clive  stupidly. 

"  Her  gracious  Majesty  is  pleased 


i#         a  Tffilbirl  BsunDcr. 

to  signify  that  she  will  give  you  audi 
ence  in  her  boudoir,"  said  Rollins, 
who  stood  beside  him. 

"  But  I  can't  go  to  her  room  at  this 
hour.  It's  one  o'clock." 

"  That  is  her  affair.  Besides,  no 
one  else  need  know.  Follow  the 
Mongolian.  If  you  don't  it's  like 
her  to  come  here  and  order  you  to 
go." 

The  Chinaman  left  Clive  at  the 
door  of  the  boudoir.  The  room  was 
empty  and  dimly  lit.  The  air  was 
heavy  with  the  scent  of  the  roses 
beyond  the  window.  Clive  looked 
up  into  the  forest.  The  aisles  were 
too  black  for  shadows,  although  the 
huge  trunks  were  denned.  The  mys 
terious  arbors  above  sang  gently. 

Helena  came  out  of  her  bedroom 
presently,  closing  the  door  behind 
her. 

Clive  went  to  meet  her.  "  Am  I 
to  apologize  ?"  he  asked.  "  I  shan't 


&  TKflblrl  Bsunfcer.          137 

mean  it  if  I  do.  What  you  did  was- 
abominable." 

"  Don't  scold  me.  I  never  thought 
I'd  do  such  a  thing.  I  don't  know 
what  possessed  me." 

"The  devil,  I  should  say.  But  I 
hope  I'll  never  see  you  in  that  mood 
again.  You  were  at  your  unloveliest., 
You  came  near  to  being  vulgar." 

"  I  was  quite  vulgar  and  you  know 
it.  Don't  let  us  say  any  more  about 
it.  Sit  down  here  in  the  window." 

The  window-seat  was  broad  and 
deep  and  heavily  cushioned.  They 
made  themselves  very  comfortable. 

"  You  can  light  your  pipe.  I  am 
glad  you  came — very  glad." 

"  I  ought  not  to  be  here  at  all.  I 
was  an  ungrateful  wretch  in  the  first 
place  not  to  go  where  I  ought  to  be 
now,  and  a  weaker  one  to  come 
here." 

Helena  leaned  her  elbow  on  the 
low  grating  and  looked  up  at  him. 


*38          B  TKRbltl  Bsimfcer. 

There  was  neither  childishness  nor 
coquetry  in  her  eyes. 

"  But  I  am  glad."  She  paused  a 
moment.  "  I  have  sent  away  Mr. 
Van  Rhuys." 

"  Mr.  Van  Rhuys  has  had  a  happy 
escape — and  I  am  not  necessarily 
uncomplimentary  to  you." 

"  Why  didn't  you  tell  me  of  your 
engagement  to  Mary  Gordon  the 
other  night?  " 

"  Partly  because  she  asked  me 
not  to,  partly  because  I  didn't  think 
it  would  interest  you." 

"  You  are  very  modest." 

"  Would  it  have  interested  you  ? " 

"  It  does — immensely.  What  an 
irrepressible  flirt  you  are  !  " 

"  Do  you  expect  me  to  sit  up  at 
midnight  with  a  pretty  woman,  and 
not  flirt  with  her  ?  Why  else  did 
you  send  for  me  to  come  here  ?  " 

"You  are  engaged  to  another 
woman." 


21  THUbfrl  BsunDcr.          139 

"  You  expect  no  man  to  remember 
his  obligations  when  he  is  with  you." 
He  laid  down  his  pipe  suddenly. 
"  Give  me  these  two  weeks,"  he 
said  ;  "  I  shall  never  meet  a  woman 
like  you  again.  If  you  will  forget 
what  the  end  must  be,  I  will." 

"Why  is  it  that  Englishmen  are 
always  marrying  that  type  of  woman 
— and  always  forgetting  their  obli 
gations  ?" 

"  Because  it  is  the  best  type   of 
woman  alive  and   the  hope  of  the 
race.     Man  is  both   the   victim   of 
his  race  and  of  his  sex.     Woman  is 
only  the  victim  of  man — which  sim 
plifies  the  question  for  her." 
"  Do  you  love  Mary  Gordon  ?" 
"  Yes — very  much  indeed." 
"  Shall  you  always  love  her  ?  " 
"I  think  so — more  and  more.     A 
good  woman  becomes  a  great  deal 
to  a  man.     She  may  lack  the    two 
things  that  enthrall  man  most,  pas- 


HO         a  TKHbirl  asunder. 

sion  and  intellect ;  but  she  shares 
his  burdens  and  his  sorrows  ;  she 
never  fails  him  in  poverty  or  in 
trouble  ;  her  sympathy  is  as  ready 
for  the  small  harrowings  of  life  as 
for  its  disasters.  She  satisfies  the 
domestic  instinct  which  is  in  every 
man — symbolizes  home  to  him. 
She  bears  his  children  and  gives 
him  unfailing  submission  and  help." 

Helena  pressed  her  fan  against 
her  lips.  Something  stabbed 
through  her. 

"A  clever  woman]  could  give  you 
all  that — and  more,"  she  said,  after 
a  moment. 

"  No  ;  she  might  think  she  could 
in  the  first  enthusiasm  of  love.  But 
she  would  not,  for  the  reason  that 
she  would  exact  as  much  in  return  ; 
and  a  man  has  so  little  time." 

"  And  is  that  your  idea  of  happi 
ness  ?" 

He     hesitated    a  moment.      "  It 


B  Wbitl  BsunDer.  141 

would  be  hard  to  find  a  better. 
There  are  plenty  of  clever  and  at 
tractive  women  a  man  can  always 
meet." 

"  That  is  not  what  I  asked  you. 
You  answered  for  the  race,  not  for 
yourself.  Are  you  afraid  of  being 
disloyal  to  Mary  Gordon  ?  Well, 
these  two  weeks  are  to  be  mine,  not 
hers.  If  you  will  not  be  frank  with 
me  how  are  we  to  know  each  other  ? 
And  I  will  keep  your  confidences. 
Tell  me — is  that  your  idea  of  happi 
ness  ? " 

"  No,"  he  said.     "  It  is  not," 

"Why did  you  ask  her  to  marry 
you — seeing  things  as  clearly  as  you 
do  ?  There  is  not  the  same  excuse 
for  you  as  for  many  men." 

"  Four  years  ago  I  had  thought 
less.  And  propinquity  is  a  strong 
factor." 

"What  shall  you  do  when  you 
meet  the  one  woman  ?  " 


H2  a  'Oflbitl  Ssun&er. 

"  I  don't  know.  No  man  knows 
beforehand  what  he  will  do  in  any 
circumstance.  Perhaps  I  should 
behave  like  a  scoundrel  and  cut. 
Perhaps  I  should  find  strength  some 
where." 

"  What  is  the  use  of  strength  ? 
What  do  all  those  ideals  amount  to, 
anyhow  ?  I  have  often  had  the 
most  exalted  longings,  a  desire  for 
something  better  and  higher,  I 
hardly  know  what.  And  I  have  al 
ways  asked — To  what  end  ?  Cut 
bono  ?  " 

"  That  is  because  you  will  believe 
that  the  mystery  of  your  nature 
means  nothing;  that  the  blind 
striving  of  millions  of  beings  for 
spiritual  things,  which  is  formulated 
under  the  general  name  of  religion, 
means  nothing.  The  lower  plane 
you  live  on  now  the  longer  will  be 
your  climb  hereafter." 


B  "CDlbtrl  Ssunfcer,  143 

"  Does  Mary  Gordon  share  your 
convictions?  " 

"  I  have  never  spoken  of  them  to 
her." 

"  Shall  you  ?  " 

"  Most  likely." 

"  And  she  will  believe  whatever 
you  tell  her  to  believe  ? " 

"  I  think  I  can  carry  her  with 
me." 

"  And  that  will  be  another 
bond  ?  " 

"Yes." 

"  You  are  an  extraordinary  man, 
and  we  do  have  the  most  remarka 
ble  midnight  conversations." 

"  I  am  ready  to  talk  of  other 
things.  Are  you  going  to  give  me 
these  two  weeks  ?  " 

"Yes." 

"  Are  you  going  to  behave  your 
self,  or  are  you  going  to  treat  me 
to  another  performance  like  that  of 
last  night  ? " 


«44  H  laabtrl  BsunOer. 

"  Oh— never !  I  hope  I  shall 
never  feel  that  way  again.  Papa 
used  to  encourage  me  when  I  got 
on  my  high  horse,  and  I  always  let 
myself  go.  But  I  became  ashamed 
of  myself  for  being  so  undignified, 
some  years  ago.  I  can't  think  why  I 
— yes  I  can,  of  course,  and  you  know 
-why  just  as  well  as  I  do." 

"  Give  me  your  hand." 

She  gave  it  to  him,  and  he  bent 
over  her.  She  had  no  thought  of 
failure,  but  she  shrank  away. 

"Wait,"  she  said. 

"  For  what  ?  You  have  dismissed 
Van  Rhuys,  and  we  have  only  two 
weeks." 

"  Is  it  necessary  that  I  should 
kiss  you  ? " 

"  Do  you  think  it  would  be  fair 
to  me  if  you  did  not  ?  Do  you  ex 
pect  me  to  wander  all  day  in  that 
forest  and  sit  up  all  night  with  you 
without  kissing  you  ?  What  do  you 


B  TKUbtrl  SsunDer.          145 

think  I  am  made  of  ?  I  might  with 
a  woman  who  was  intellectual  and 
nothing  more,  but  not  with  you." 

She  slipped  away  from  him  and 
stood  up,  drawing  her  hands  over 
her  eyes. 

"I  cannot  understand  myself," 
she  said.  "  I  have  let  eight  men  kiss 
me  and  thought  little  about  it,  but  I 
cannot  kiss  you  whom  I  would 
rather  than  any  man  I  have  ever 
known.  Won't  you  go  away  now  ? " 

He  got  up  at  once. 

"  I  don't  know  what  there  is 
about  you,"  he  said.  "  I  never 
knew  another  woman  whom  I  would 
have  obeyed  for  a  moment  in  the 
same  conditions.  Good-night." 


CHAPTER  XII. 

HE  did  not  see  her  alone  again 
for  two  days,  although  he  was  with 
her  constantly,  and  they  had  long 
talks  apart.  There  were  seven 
clever  men  at  Casa  Norte  this  time  ; 
all  of  the  women  were  bright,  or 
more,  and  the  days  and  nights  were 
very  gay.  They  rode  and  drove 
and  sailed  and  picnicked,  and  sang 
and  played  tennis  and  told  stories, 
and  there  was  much  good  conver 
sation.  Clive  wrote  a  brief  note 
daily  to  Mary  Gordon,  but  gave  up 
his  thoughts  recklessly  to  Helena 
Belmont.  She  showed  to  full  ad 
vantage  as  hostess  :  thoughtful, 
suggestive,  womanly,  unselfish. 
Her  mind,  as  revealed  in  their  long 


B  lidbirl  BsunDer,  147 

conversations,  captivated  him.  Her 
grace  appealed  more  keenly  to  his 
senses  than  her  beauty,  which 
sometimes,  as  she  talked,  wholly 
disappeared,  broken  by  a  personal 
ity  so  strong  and  so  variable  as  to 
play  havoc  with  its  harmonies. 

On  the  third  morning  he  met  her 
in  the  pink-and-green  wilderness  of 
the  rose-garden.  The  dew  glittered 
on  every  leaf  and  petal,  for  the  sun 
was  hardly  over  the  mountain. 
The  guests  had  been  ordered  early 
to  bed  the  night  before,  that  they 
might  rise  early  and  go  on  a  picnic 
in  a  distant  part  of  the  forest. 
Rollins  was  buttoning  his  shirt  be 
fore  an  open  window  and  singing  a 
duet  with  Mrs.  Tower,  who  had  her 
head  out  of  another  window.  Hel 
ena  wore  a  pink-and-white  organdie 
frock  and  a  large  hat  lined  with 
pink.  She  was  gathering  a  cluster 
of  roses  for  her  belt.  As  Clive 


148  B  TOlbirl 

joined  her  she  plucked  a  bud  and 
pinned  it  on  his  cheviot  shirt  :  he 
wore  no  coat  ;  the  men  only  dressed 
for  dinner. 

Clive's  broad  shoulders  were  be 
tween  the  house  and  Helena.  He 
pressed  his  hand  suddenly  over  hers, 
flattening  the  bud. 

"You've  stuck  me,"  she  said, 
pouting.  "  These  roses  are  full  of 
thorns." 

"  I  think  I'd  better  go." 

She  gave  him  a  glance  of  mingled 
alarm,  anger  and  appeal. 

"You  will  not  go!  " 

She  turned  her  hand  about  and 
clasped  it  over  his. 

"  What  is  the  use  ?  I'm  afraid 
I'm  getting  in  too  deep.  What 
common  sense  I  have  left  tells  me 
to  get  out  while  there  is  time." 

She  tightened  her  clasp.  "  But 
you  won't  go  ? "  she  said  imperi 
ously. 


H  TKlbirl  asunfcer.          149 

"  No,  I  shall  not  go.  If  I  did  I 
shouldn't  stay." 

Helena  threw  back  her  head,  her 
woman's  keen  delight  in  power  over 
man  as  strong  for  the  moment  as 
her  gladness  in  Clive's  touch  and 
presence. 

After  breakfast  Miss  Belmont 
and  her  guests  drove  for  two  hours 
through  the  forest,  scarcely  seeing 
the  sun,  then  camped  in  a  canon  by 
a  running  stream.  The  canon  was 
narrow  at  the  bottom  but  widened 
above,  and  seemed  to  have  gath 
ered  all  the  sunshine  of  the  day. 
Its  sides  were  a  tangle  of  fragrant 
chaparral,  wild  roses,  purple  lilac, 
and  red  lily,  the  delicate  green  of 
young  trees,  the  metallic  green  and 
red  of  the  madrono.  On  high  were 
the  stark  redwoods. 

Some  of  the  men  went  frankly  to 
sleep  after  luncheon.  The  others 


i5°  B  TKHbtrl 

and  several  of  the  girls  fished  ar 
dently. 

"Come,"  said  Helena  to  Ciive, 
"  there  is  a  trail  over  there,  and  I 
want  to  see  what  is  on  top." 

"  It  will  be  a  hard  pull." 

"  Don't  you  want  to  come  ?  Very 
well,  I'll  go  alone.  Hang  my  hat 
on  that  tree." 

She  sprang  lightly  from  stone  to 
stone  across  the  stream. 

He  followed  her  up  the  steep 
side  of  the  canon,  through  brush  so 
dense  that  they  were  quickly  out  of 
sight,  and  through  a  bewildering 
fragrance.  At  the  top  they  were  in 
the  dark  forest  again,  and  pushed 
along  as  best  they  could.  They 
found  themselves  among  the  strag 
gling  outposts  of  an  under-forest  of 
fronds.  A  few  redwoods  spread 
their  spiked  arms  above  it,  but  the 
;sun  touched  many  a  rustling  fan. 
The  heights  beyond  lifted  away  ir- 


151 

regularly,  in  steeps  and  galleries 
and  higher  levels,  a  gracious  blue 
mist  softening  the  austerity  of  the 
crowding  trees.  A  creek  roared 
softly  above  the  low  rhythmic  mur 
mur  of  the  forest.  Even  these 
slight  sounds  seemed  to  intrude  on 
the  great  primeval  silence. 

"'What  is  it  ?  "  asked  Helena, "  the 
peculiar  influence  of  these  redwood 
forests  ?  I  have  been  in  other  for 
ests  in  many  parts  of  the  world, 
and  I  have  never  known  anything 
like  this.  It  lifts  one  up,  makes 
one  feel  capable  of  anything,  and 
yet  gives  one  a  terrible  longing  and 
loneliness — when  one  is  alone." 

"  It  is  partly  spiritual,  partly  sen 
sual.  The  forest  seems  to  hold  in 
essence  the  two  principles  of  the 
universe.  Do  you  want  to  go  in 
among  these  ferns  ?  They  are 
pretty  thick,  but  I  can  hold  them 
back  for  you." 


*52         B  THHbirl  Ssun&er. 

"Yes,  I  want  to  see  what  is  in 
there." 

They  pushed  in  among  the  fronds, 
which  grew  taller  as  they  pene 
trated.  Soon  Clive  had  no  need  to 
hold  the  leaves  apart  for  his  com 
panion  ;  they  spread  out  a  foot  and 
more  above  their  heads.  The 
place,  a  young  forest  of  slender  col 
umns,  was  filled  with  green  light. 
Small  feathery  ferns  nodded  in  a 
little  breeze.  The  creek  seemed  to 
murmur  above  them.  Clive  turned 
and  looked  at  Helena.  Her  face 
was  glorified.  He  took  her  in  his 
arms  and  kissed  her.  She  did  not 
shrink  from  him,  and  they  clung 
together. 

After  a  few  moments  she  moved 
her  head  back  and  looked  up  at 
him.  His  eyes  were  not  laughing. 

"  There  is  something  I  want  to 
say,"  she  said.  "A  woman  doesn't 
usually  say  it  until  she  is  asked.  I 


a  Mbtrl  HsunDer.          153 

love  you.  I  want  you  to  know  that 
I  couldn't  kiss  you  like  that  if  I  did 
not." 

"  I  believe  that  you  love  me,"  he 
said. 

"  Did  you  guess  the  reason  I  did 
not  kiss  you  the  other  night  ?  I  had 
intended  to,  but  it  suddenly  came  to 
me  that  you  did  not  love  me  enough, 
that  you  were  merely  in  love  with 
me  ;  and  I  could  not  give  myself 
like  that.  I  intended  to  wait  longer 
than  this.  But  I  forgot."  She  hes 
itated  a  moment — the  color  left  her 
face.  "  Do  you  love  me  ? "  she 
asked. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  I  love  you." 

She  went  back  to  his  arms,  but 
even  while  she  learned  the  lesson 
that  some  women  learn  once  only, 
and  then  possessingly  and  finally, 
she  realized  that  she  had  not  the 
courage  to  speak  of  Mary  Gordon. 
She  had  intended,  the  moment  she 


*54  B  THibtrl  BeunOer. 

was  sure  of  him,  to  command  him  to 
break  his  engagement  at  once  ;  but 
her  arrogant  will  found  itself  sup 
ple  before  the  strong  fibre  of  the 
man,  and  shrank  from  the  en 
counter.  They  walked  on  after  a 
time,  until  they  came  to  a  stone, 
where  they  sat  down.  She  put  her 
hands  about  his  face.  The  motion 
was  a  little  awkward,  but  she  was  a 
woman  who  would  grow  very  lavish 
with  caresses. 

"  Why  do  you  look  so  serious  ?" 
she  asked.  "You  looked  so  differ 
ent  a  moment  ago." 

"The  situation  is  serious,"  he 
said  briefly.  "  But  don't  let  us  talk 
about  it ;  we  have  twelve  more 
days." 

She  threw  her  head  back  against 
his  shoulder  and  looked  up  into  the 
feathery  roof.  A  ray  of  light  wan 
dered  in  and  touched  her  face.  "  I 
am  so  happy,"  she  said,  "  I  don't 


a  TIClbirl  asunder.          155 

care  what  to-morrow  brings.  I 
have  thought  and  thought  of  being 
with  you  like  this  and  now  I  am 
and  it  is  enough.  I  ought  to  be  se 
rious — I  know  what  you  are  think 
ing  of — but  it  doesn't  matter  ;  noth 
ing  but  this  matters.  I  never  took 
life  seriously — except  in  a  sort  of 
abstract  mental  way  occasionally — 
until  a  week  ago,  and  I  doubt  if  I 
could  keep  it  up." 

"You  could  keep  it  up.  You 
don't  know  yourself." 

"  Once  I  got  dreadfully  bored 
and  took  care  of  a  sick  poor  woman 
who  lived  in  a  cabin  near  a  place 
where  I  was  staying.  Her  husband 
was  away  in  the  mines,  and  she  had 
no  one  to  look  after  her  but  neigh 
bors  as  poor  as  herself.  I  sat  up 
with  her  and  worked  over  her  as  if 
she  were  my  sister.  I  was  fright 
fully  interested,  and  so  proud  of 
myself.  Then  one  morning — I 


156          a  "Cdbirl  Saun&er. 

think  it  was  the  fifth — I  was  sitting 
by  the  window  about  four  o'clock, 
looking  at  the  view,  which  was 
beautiful — a  rolling  country  cov 
ered  with  closely  trimmed  grape 
vines,  and  miles  and  miles  beyond 
a  range  of  blue  mountains.  It  was 
so  quiet.  Eternity  must  be  like 
that  quiet  of  four  in  the  morning. 
And  gradually  as  I  looked,  the  most 
sickening  disgust  crept  over  me  for 
the  life  I  had  led  the  past  four  days, 
an  utter  collapse  of  my  philanthropy. 
I  wanted  to  go  away  and  be  frivo 
lous.  I  was  hideously  bored.  I 
hated  the  sick  woman,  her  poverty 
and  everything  serious  in  life.  I 
stole  away  and  sent  back  a  servant 
to  stop  until  I  could  get  a  trained 
nurse.  I  never  went  near  the 
woman  again." 

He  pressed  her  to  him  with  pas 
sionate  sympathy.  "  Poor  child," 
he  said,  "you  have  lived  only  in 
the  shallows.  I  wish  you  always 
might." 

But  she  was  too  happy  to  heed 
anything  but  the  strength  of  his 
embrace. 


B  IRHbicl  asunder.          157 

"  You  don't  know  yourself,"  he 
said,  "  not  the  least  little  bit." 

"  I  know  a  lot  more  than  you  think, 
and  I  know  how  I  can  love  you.'* 

"You  hardly  know  that.  You 
have  merely  a  vague  far  away  notion. 
All  your  woman's  lore  is  borrowed, 
and  you  are  only  half  awake.  Your 
mind,  your  mental  conception  of 
things,  has  outrun  everything  else. 
If  the  other  part  ever  caught  up 
you  would  be  a  wonderful  woman." 

Something  in  his  tone  made  her 
take  her  will  between  her  teeth. 

"You  will  teach  me,"  she  said 
imperiously,  "  as  long  as  we  are  both 
alive." 

"  Yes,  if  I  am  a  scoundrel.  But 
don't  let  us  talk  about  that  now, 
please.  I  will  be  happy,  too.  Come, 
let  us  get  out  of  this.  It  is  damp 
and  we  will  get  rheumatism,  which  is 
not  romantic.  Let  us  go  home  and 
sit  in  your  boudoir.  I  feel  as  if  I 
should  like  to  be  surrounded  by  the 
conventionalities  of  life  for  a  time. 
One  feels  too  primitive  in  this  for 
est." 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  next  morning  she  awoke  with 
a  sudden  pang  of  sympathy  for 
Mary  Gordon.  Her  intuitions  were 
keener  than  they  had  ever  been. 
She  turned  restlessly,  then  sprang 
out  of  bed  and  rang  for  her  maid. 

She  went  out  into  the  garden  and 
gathered  a  basket  of  roses  for  the 
breakfast-table.  As  she  entered  the 
court,  the  dew  on  her  hair,  her  damp 
frock  clinging  to  her  bust  and  arms, 
Clive  was  standing  by  the  fountain, 
and  alone.  His  eyes  had  been  dull, 
but  the  light  sprang  to  them  as  he 
went  forward  to  meet  her.  He  half 
held  out  his  arms.  She  dropped  the 
basket  into  them  with  a  little  laugh. 

"Come  into  the  dining-room," 
she  said,  "  and  help  me  arrange 
them." 

The  water  was  ready  in  the  silver 
and  crystal  bowls.  She  disposed 
the  roses  with  a  few  practised 


BsunDer.          159 


touches,  then  turned  and  flung  her 
arms  about  Clive  and  kissed  him. 

"What  is  the  matter,"  she  asked. 
Didn't  you  sleep  ?" 

"  No  ;  not  much." 

"You  said  you  would  not  think, 
Not  for  twelve  days." 

"  I  shall  try  not  to." 

"  You  must  sleep  after  breakfast, 
I'll  have  your  room  darkened  and 
all  the  horrid  flies  put  out,  and 
Faun  will  stand  outside  your  door 
and  see  that  no  one  passes." 

"What  a  dear  little  wife  you 
would  make." 

"  Do  you  think  I  would  make  a 
good  wife?"  she  asked  anxiously. 
4<  That  you  could  do  anything  with 
all  this  raw  material  ?  " 

"  I  think  you  would  make  the 
most  perfect  wife  in  the  world,"  he 
said. 

Helena  made  no  secret  of  her  love 
for  Clive.  Even  if  she  had  been  less 
sure  of  success,  she  would  have 
gloried  in  doing  him  honor.  But, 
although  she  did  not  doubt  the  issue, 
she  had  respect  enough  for  him  to 


160  a  "CGlbtrl 


scent  a  battle  ahead,  and  the  savage 
in  her  was  ardent  for  the  fight. 

The  household  was  profoundly 
interested.  Helena,  despite  her  love 
of  power,  had  never  been  known  be 
fore  to  deliberately  woo  a  man  from 
another  woman.  They  knew  that 
she  must  be  mastered  by  a  passion 
new  to  her,  to  ignore  a  girl  whom 
she  liked  and  respected  as  she  did 
Mary  Gordon.  Even  the  women 
believed  she  would  win  ;  only  Rol 
lins  doubted. 

"  I  don't  know,"  he  said  to  Mrs. 
Lent  ;  "  he's  broad-guage,  that  man. 
He's  so  infatuated  now  that  he 
doesn't  know  where  he's  at.  But 
he'll  wake  up,  and  then  I  don't  know 
that  even  Helena  Belmont  will  be 
able  to  manage  him.  A  man  hates 
to  go  back  on  a  girl,  anyhow  ;  he 
doesn't  exactly  know  how  to  do  it." 

"Well,  I  wish  he'd  hurry  and 
make  up  his  mind,"  said  Mrs.  Lent, 
"for  he  looks  like  a  funeral.  He 
flirted  with  even  poor  little  me  when 
he  first  came,  but  I  haven't  seen  that 
delightfully  wicked  expression  in  his 
•eyes  for  a  week." 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

CLIVE  would  not  sit  up  all  night 
with  Helena,  but  they  spent  hours 
of  the  day  in  the  forest,  and  there 
was  nothing  funereal  in  his  aspect 
when  they  were  alone.  One  morn 
ing  Helena's  maid  brought  her  a 
note  when  she  came  to  awaken  her. 

"My  dear  Miss  Belmont  "  (it  ran), — "I 
am  going  away  for  a  few  days.  I  shall  be 
back  on  Monday,  at  four. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  OWIN  CLIVE." 

Helena  stared  at  the  abrupt,  for 
mal  missive  in  dismay  for  a  moment ; 
then  laughed.  She  had  seen  men 
struggle  in  her  net  before.  She 
knew  that  he  would  keep  his  word 
and  return,  and  had  perfect  faith  in 
the  power  of  her  seductive  charm,  no 
matter  what  good  resolve  he  might 
accomplish  when  away. 

It  was  a  hot  day,  and  her  guests 
were  too  indolent  to  do  anything 


162         B  TKIlbfrl  BsunDer. 

but  lie  about  and  smoke  and  read. 
They  did  not  want  to  be  entertained, 
and  she  let  them  alone  and  spent 
the  day  in  the  rose-garden  in  the 
shade  of  the  oaks.  She  rather  en 
joyed  thinking  of  Clive,  for  variety, 
and  anticipating  his  return.  She 
concocted  clever  arguments  and 
convincing  appeals.  She  saw  her 
self  in  the  gowns  she  would  wear 
when  he  was  with  her  again,  and 
was  glad  for  the  wealth  that  gave 
such  potent  aid  to  her  beauty.  She 
was  very  happy :  the  future  was  so 
exquisite  that  she  trembled  and 
grew  breathless  at  the  thought  of  it. 

The  next  day  she  sat  on  a  ledge 
below  the  crest  of  the  cliffs,  and 
stared  at  the  huge  restless  waves  of 
the  Pacific  rearing  against  the  out 
lying  rocks,  falling  with  their  baffled 
roar.  There  was  neither  peace,  nor 
reason,  nor  power  of  anticipation  in 
her.  She  was  insensible  of  any  in 
stinct  beyond  an  insufferable  desire 
for  his  physical  presence.  j 

That  night  she  went  to  bed  glad 
with  the  thought  that  she  should  see 
him  in  sixteen  hours,  and  pictured 


H  TWlbfrl  asunder.  163 

their  meeting  so  often  and  variously, 
and  struck  a  match  to  look  at  the 
clock  so  many  times,  that  she  slept 
little.  The  next  morning  she  was 
so  nervous  and  apprehensive  that 
the  placid  conversation  of  her  guests 
was  intolerable,  and  she  would  not 
drive  with  them.  After  luncheon 
she  went  up  to  a  favorite  spot  in  the 
forest,  directing  one  of  the  Chinese 
servants  to  conduct  Clive  to  her 
when  he  returned. 

As  the  afternoon  wore  on  her 
gloom  lifted  and  passed.  She  grew 
light  minded  and  humorous,  almost 
indifferent.  She  took  herself  to 
task  in  some  dismay  :  in  the  fitness 
of  things  she  should  be  passionately 
serious  when  he  arrived.  "  Are 
there  really  no  great  crises  in  life  ?" 
she  thought.  "  Are  we  all  come 
dians  gone  wrong,  personified 
jokes?"  But  she  was  helpless; 
the  reaction  was  inevitable. 

Clive  was   late.     He   was   always , 
late.     Helena    felt    no    uneasiness/ 
but   sat  idly,  wondering  how    they 
would  meet,  her  mind   occasionally 
drifting  to  other   things.     She  had 


1 64         B  Wbfrl  BsunDer. 

carried  a  large  hat  lined  with  white 
and  covered  with  white  plumes,  in 
a  box  through  the  damaging  brush, 
and  hidden  the  box  in  a  hollow  red 
wood.  The  hat,  pushed  backward 
on  her  brilliant  hair  enhanced  the 
oval  colorous  beauty  of  her  face. 
She  took  it  off  suddenly  and  threw 
it  on  the  ground  ;  the  attempt  was 
too  evident  ;  all  men  were  not  con 
sistently  dense. 

She  heard  a  crackling  in  the  brush 
on  the  other  side  of  the  creek,  then 
the  Chinaman's  protesting  voice. 

"  Can't  hully  when  catchee  pigtail 
allee  time,  Mister  Clive.  Me  got 
thlee  velly  bad  sclatches,  and 
clothes  allee  same  no  washee." 

There  was  no  answer  from  Clive, 
but  he  was  in  view  presently.  The 
Chinaman  retreated  hastily,  wrap 
ping  his  pig-tail  round  his  neck. 
Helena  rose  and  went  forward. 
She  felt  suddenly  resentful  and 
haughty. 

After  all,  it  was  presumption  in  a 
man  to  take  upon  himself  the  decid 
ing  of  a  question  which  was  as  vital 
to  her  as  to  him.  She  wondered  if 


a  THHbttl  BsunOer.  165 

she  really  did  love  him  ;  certainly 
she  felt  neither  tenderness  nor  toler 
ance  at  the  moment. 

Clive  walked  slowly  across  the 
felled  redwood  which  served  as 
bridge  between  the  high  banks  of 
the  creek.  As  he  approached  Hel 
ena  forgot  herself  and  her  moods. 

"  He  has  suffered  horribly,"  she 
thought.  "  What  am  I  that  I  did  not 
know  he  must  ?  " 

And  then  she  realized  that  she 
could  not  comprehend  his  experience 
of  the  past  three  days;  that  her  mind 
merely  grasped  the  fact ;  she  had 
no  profounder,  more  sympathetic 
understanding.  She  drew  back, 
frightened  and  chilled. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  see  you  looking  so 
badly,"  she  said  coldly,  as  they 
shook  hands.  "  Perhaps  we  had 
better  have  it  out  at  once." 

They  sat  down  against  two  red 
woods,  facing  each  other. 

"  Very  well,"  said  Clive,  "  I  have 
been  a  scoundrel  and  nothing  I  can 
say  is  the  least  excuse.  I  can  only 
state  the  facts.  .  .  .  The  average 
girl  who  is  an  avowed  flirt  expects  to 


i66         a  TOlblrl  Ssun&er. 

be  made  love  to,  and  a  man  finds  it 
no  task  to  do  what  a  charming  wo 
man  exacts  of  him.  ...  I  took  you 
in  the  beginning  for  a  spoilt  beauty, 
a  coquette,  above  the  average  as  far 
as  brain  was  concerned,  but  still 
suggesting  little  more  than  an 
unusually  spirited  flirtation.  Of 
course,  I  was  far  more  fascinated 
than  I  realized  or  I  should  not  have 
come  to  your  house,  nor  should  I 
have  asked  you  to  give  me  these  two 
weeks.  .  .  .That  it  might  mean  life  or 
death  to  either  of  us  I  did  not  real 
ize  until  that  day  among  the  ferns." 

The  fight  was  on.  Helena  threw 
back  her  head.  "  Can  you  not  ex 
plain  to  Mary  Gordon  ?  Surely  she 
would  release  you." 

"  I  never  could  explain  to  Mary 
Gordon,  She  would  comprehend 
that  after  four  years  I  had  thrown 
her  over  for  a  prettier  woman  whom 
I  had  known  two  weeks.  Women 
like  that — simple,  good,  loyal  wo 
men — don't  reason  and  analyze  as 
a  clever  woman  does.  And  the 
hurt  lasts — not  because  the  man  is 
worth  it,  any  more  than  any  man  is 


B  Mblrl  BsunDcr.          167 

good  enough  for  such  women — but 
because  they  are  what  they  are." 

"  But  she  was  not  the  woman  for 
you  ;  therefore  she  would  find  an 
other  man." 

"  She  would  live  on  an  isolated 
ranch  in  Southern  California  for 
several  years,  then  go  back  to  Eng 
land  and  live  in  her  old  home, 
among  the  people  she  has  known 
all  her  life.  Those  women  don't 
seek  distraction.  They  are  the 
slaves  of  an  idea.  If  the  right  man 
did  come  she  wouldn't  know  it." 

"All  of  which  means  that  you 
think  it  your  duty  to  marry  her." 

"  I  mean  to  marry  her.  There  is 
nothing  else  to  be  done.  If  there 
were  no  other  reason  I  have  no 
right  to  make  her  ridiculous." 

Helena  caught  her  breath.  For  the 
first  time  she  mentally  appreciated 
the  strength  in  the  man  which  had 
captivated  her  woman's  instincts. 
But  she  did  not  lose  courage. 

"  And  I  am  not  to  be  considered 
at  all  ?  I  say  nothing  about  being 
made  ridiculous.  If  I  am  it  is  my 
own  fault,  and  I  don't  care,  any- 


168         a  TWlbtrl  Bsun&er, 

how  ;  that  seems  to  me  a  very  in 
significant  matter.  Now  that  I 
have  found  you  am  I  to  be  left 
alone — thirty,  forty  years  ?  You 
know  that  I  have  about  equal  possi 
bilities  of  good  and  bad  in  me.  If 
I  married  you  I  could  become  as 
wholly  good  as  any  mortal  can.  I 
never  realized  what  possibilities 
there  are  in  any  of  us  as  I  did  in 
the  last  few  days  before  you  went 
away.  The  principal  reason  that  I 
love  you  is  because  I  always  feel  that 
there  is  something  in  you  to  climb 
to  and  that  you  could  lift  me  up  to 
you.  If  you  leave  me  I'll  become  a 
bad  women.  Why  not  ?  It  must  be 
very  interesting,  and  I  have  nothing 
more  in  life  to  look  forward  to.  If 
I  lived  with  you  I  might  grow  into 
your  belief  ;  you  could  carry  me  any 
where  ;  but  alone  I  cannot.  More 
over,  I  want  to  live  in  this  life.  I  can 
not  sit  down  and  wait  patiently  for  a 
mythical  and  unsubstantial  here 
after.  I  am  too  much  of  a  savage,  I 
suppose,  but  at  all  events,  I  can't." 

"  There  will  be  no  excuse  for  you 
to  become  a  bad  woman.     You  have 


a  IKlbirl  asunder.          169 

too  much  brain  and  money — too 
many  methods  of  distraction.  You 
can  travel  and  make  any  life  you 
choose.  The  world  is  an  interesting 
place  ;  you  don't  know  the  ABC 
of  it." 

"You  are  cruel." 

"  Yes,"  he  said.  "  More  so  than 
you  realize  just  now." 

"  I'm  not  doubting  that  you  love 
me.  If  I  did  do  you  suppose  I 
would  argue  with  you  ?  I'm  not  in 
a  tender  or  sympathetic  mood. 
There  is  too  much  to  be  said.  I 
mustta.\k  it  out  now  ;  we  are  not  an 
ordinary  pair  of  fools."  She  paused 
a  moment  and  looked  straight  at 
him.  "  We  have  a  more  imperative 
duty  to  ourselves  than  to  traditions. 
You  are  in  the  new  world  now,  al 
most  in  a  new  civilization.  Smash 
such  outworn  ideals.  They  are  noth 
ing,  nothing  to  human  happiness." 

"  Such  traditions  as  honor  and 
faith  and  pity  for  the  weaker  are  in 
the  bone  and  blood  of  the  older  civ 
ilization.  If  we  tore  them  out  there 
is  not  much  we've  got  that's  worth 
anything  that  wouldn't  follow." 


i?o          B  TKUbfrl  BsunDer, 

"  I  would  not  care — not  a  straw. 
I  should  love  you  whether  you  were 
satisfied  with  yourself  or  not,  and  I 
could  make  you  forget." 

"  No  ;  you  could  not." 

"  Oh,  you  are  way  above  me,"  she 
said  bitterly.  "  I  don't  mean  to  say 
that  I  haven't  known  plenty  of  hon 
orable  men,  but  they  would  find  a 
way  out  of  it — for  me.  You  seem 
to  be  welded  together  so  compactly 
that  every  characteristic  is  bound 
up  with  every  other.  Nothing  is 
acquired,  separate.  Probably  I'd 
never  reach  you,  after  all.  Perhaps 
it  is  as  well  we  don't  marry " 

"  I  wish  you  would  not  talk  as  if  I 
were  an  infernal  prig.  Can't  you 
imagine  what  an  ass  a  man  feels 
when  a  woman  rots  to  him  like  that  ? 
I  am  the  most  ordinary  person  you 
will  probably  ever  know.  If  I 
were  not  we  wouldn't  be  where  we 
are  to-day.  Now  that  I  have  made 
such  a  mess  of  things  I  can  only  see 
one  way  out  of  it,  and  I  don't  feel  a 
hero,  I  assure  you." 

"  Have  you  thought  of  yourself  at 
all  during  the  last  three  days  ?  " 

"  Of  course  I've  thought  of  my- 


a  Wbfrl  asun&er.          171 

self.  What  a  question.  And  think 
ing  of  myself  meant  thinking  of  you." 

44  But  you  have  thought  more  of 
Mary  Gordon — I  mean  you  have 
considered  her  more." 

"Yes;  I  have." 

She  got  up  and  went  over  and 
sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  bluff. 
He  filled  his  pipe.  She  smiled  as 
the  smoke  drifted  to  her.  She 
thought  that  she  had  never  seen  the 
creek  look  so  beautiful.  The  stones 
under  the  clear  water  shone  like 
opaque  jewels.  Great  bunches  of 
feathery  maidenhair  clung  to  every 
boulder.  The  long  delicate  strands 
of  the  ice-grass  trailed  far  over 
the  water.  Tiny  trees  sprouted 
from  rocks  in  mid-stream,  where 
moss  had  gathered.  Red  lilies  and 
ferns  grew  close  to  the  brink.  The 
ugly  brown  roots  of  a  pine  clung, 
squirming,  down  the  bluff. 

On  the  mountain  above  the  pla 
teau  a  deer  leaped  once,  crashing 
through  the  brush,  tossing  his  white 
horns  in  terror  at  sight  of  man.  A 
squirrel  chattered  high  up  in  a  red 
wood,  where  he  was  packing  acorns 
for  the  winter.  A  school  of  salmon 


i/2          B  "Odbirl  BsunDet. 

swam  serenely  down  the  creek  and 
disappeared  in  the  dark  perspective. 

Helena  sat  there  for  a  half-hour. 
Then  she  went  back  to  Clive,  but 
did  not  sit  down.  He  rose  also. 

"  I  understand  you  a  little  better, 
I  think,"  she  said.  "You  wont 
like  what  I  am  going  to  say,  but  I 
shall  say  it,  anyhow.  You  have  so 
much  good  in  you.  I  never  thought 
I  should  love  a  good  man,  but  I  be 
lieve  that  is  really  the  reason  I  love 
you  so  much.  The  raw  material  in 
me  responds  to  the  highly  devel 
oped  in  you.  You  are  capable  of  so 
much  that  is  way  beyond  me.  I 
have  fine  impulses,  but  they  are 
shallow  ;  lofty  ideals,  but  in  a  little 
while  they  bore  me.  And  you  are 
consistent.  Even  when  you  do 
what  you  know  to  be  wrong,  you 
never  vary  in  your  ideals  and  faith. 
I  am  new  and  crude  and  heteroge 
neous.  It  is  the  difference  between 
the  Old  and  the  New." 

"You  have  the  richest  possibili 
ties  of  any  woman  I  have  ever 
known " 

"Tell    me  something.     Is  it    not 


21  TOlbirl  Bsun&er.          173 

because  Mary  Gordon  is  the  more 
helpless  and  appeals  more  to  your 
chivalry  ? — although  you  love  me 
more  ;  although  I  have  more  beauty 
and  brains  and  passion,  and  could 
make  you  far  happier  ? " 

"  That  is  one  reason." 

"Then  will  the  manliest  and  best 
of  men  continue  to  be  captured  by 
the  best  and  simplest  of  women  ? 
It  will  produce  a  better  race,  I  sup 
pose.  If  I  had  been  your  mother 
you  would  not  be  half  what  you  are. 
It  is  enough  for  the  man  to  have 
the  brain,  I  suppose.  We  are  a 
forced  growth  and  abnormal — but 
what  is  to  become  of  us  ?  " 

His  reserve  left  him  then  and  he 
caught  her  in  his  arms.  She  clung 
to  him  desperately,  and  for  a  while 
forgot  that  the  victory  was  still  to  be 
won.  Then  she  cried,  and  coaxed, 
and  pleaded,  and  lavished  endear 
ment,  and  was  far  more  difficult  for 
the  man  to  combat  than  when  he  had 
stood  his  ground  with  a  brain  alone. 

"  Come,"  he  said  finally  ;  "  can't 
you  understand  ?  You  might  help 
me  a  little.  Can't  you  see  that  I 


i?4         B  iraibtrl  Bsun&er. 

want  to  let  everything  go  and  stay 
with  you  ?  Don't  you  think  I  know 
what  I  should  find  with  you  ?  You 
do  know  that  ?  Well,  then,  you 
should  also  know  that  I  have  made 
up  my  mind  to  do  the  only  decent 
thing  a  man  could  do." 

"  Well,  give  me  a  month  longer. 
Let  me  have  that  much,  at  least." 

"  I  shall  go  to-morrow.  If  I  go 
now  all  these  people  will  quickly 
forget  me,  and  regard  what  has 
passed  between  us  as  one  of  your 
flirtations.  But  if  I  stayed  on  I 
should  make  you  ridiculous,  and 
perhaps  compromise  you — you  are 
so  reckless.  And  for  other  reasons 
the  sooner  I  get  away  from  here 
the  better." 

"  What  are  the  other  reasons  ?" 

"  We've  discussed  the  subject 
enough.  Come,  let  us  go." 

"I  never  knew  that  a  man  could 
be  so  obstinate  with  a  beautiful 
woman  he  loved." 

"You  have  a  woman's  general 
knowledge  of  men,  but  you  know 
nothing  of  any  type  you  haven't  en 
countered.  I  believe  you  could  make 


a  TKHbicl  Bsunfcer.          175 

any  man  love  you  ;  but  certain  men 
are  greater  cowards  before  certain 
inherited  principles  than  they  are 
before  the  prospect  of  parting  from 
the  woman  they  most  love " 

"  I  said  that  you  were  the  victim 
of  traditions." 

"  Perhaps  I  am,  but  I  am  also  un 
able  to  eat  raw  fish  or  human  flesh. 
What  are  any  of  us  but  the  logical 
results  of  traditions  ?  Just  look  at 
this  fog.  Let  me  put  your  shawl 
round  you." 

Helena  turned.  A  fine  white 
mist  was  pouring  out  of  the  forest 
on  the  other  side  of  the  creek.  It 
had  passed  them,  and  was  puffing 
slowly  onward.  It  lay  softly  on  the 
creek,  covering  the  bright  water. 
It  swirled  about  the  trees  and 
moved  lightly  through  the  dark  ar 
bors  above.  It  fled  up  the  mountain 
beyond,  and  the  forest  showed 
through  the  silver  veil  like  grey  col 
umns  with  capitals  and  bases  of 
frozen  spray. 

"  Yes,  we  must  go,"  said  Helena, 
"  or  we  shall  be  lost." 


CHAPTER  XV. 

HELENA  did  not  meet  her  guests 
at  dinner  that  night,  nor  did  she 
:  trouble  to  send  word  that  she 
J  was  ill.  She  rang  for  the  Chinese 
butler,  gave  him  an  order,  then 
locked  her  doors  and  sat  motionless 
in  her  boudoir  for  hours.  She  pic 
tured  until  her  brain  ached  and  her 
ears  rang  what  her  life  with  Clive 
could  have  been,  and  what  his  would 
be  with  Mary  Gordon. 

But  despair  was  not  in  her  as  yet, 
for  he  was  still  under  the  same  roof, 
and  she  had  not  played  her  last  card. 
It  was  a  card  that  she  had  half-con- 
sciously  considered  from  the  begin 
ning,  and  during  the  last  few  days 
had  looked  full  upon.  To-night  for 
the  first  time  she  realized  that  it  was 
a  hateful  card,  unworthy  of  her,  but 
reminded  herself  that  she  was  a  wo 
man  who  would,  if  necessary,  walk 


a  Tldbitl  Ssun&et.          177 

straight  to  her  purpose  over  cracking 
and  spouting  earth. 

At  twelve  o'clock  she  sat  before 
her  dressing-table  regarding  herself 
attentively  in  the  mirror.  She  wore 
a  neglige  of  white  crepe  and  lace, 
which  half  revealed  her  neck  and 
bust.  Her  unbound  hair  clung  to 
her  body  like  melted  copper,  which 
had  just  begun  to  stiffen  into  rings, 
and  waves,  and  spirals.  She  had 
never  looked  more  beautiful. 

There  was  a  knock  at  her  door. 

"  What  is  it  ? "  she  asked. 

"  Alice  gentlemens  go  to  bled," 
announced  Ah  Sing  cautiously. 

"Very  well." 

She  rose  hurriedly,  almost  over 
turning  her  chair.  Her  hands  shook. 
She  caught  sight  of  a  terrified  face 
in  the  mirror. 

"This  won't  do!"  she  thought 
angrily.  She  rang.  Ah  Sing  re 
turned. 

"  Bring  me  a  glass  of  champagne," 
she  said. 

"Allight." 

She  closed  the  door  upon  him, 
then  opened  it  quickly.  "  Ah  Sing  !  " 
she  called. 


178         B  Mbirl 

The  Chinaman  returned. 

"  Light  a  lamp  in  the  drawing- 
room  and  ask  Mr.  Clive  to  go  there.'' 

"Alight." 

She  stood  leaningagainst  the  door, 
her  hand  pressed  hard  against  her 
chin,  her  eyes  staring  angrily  at  her 
reflection  in  a  long  Psyche  mirror. 

Ah  Sing  tapped  and  handed  in  the 
champagne.  She  pushed  it  aside 
with  a  gesture  of  disgust. 

"  Take  it  away.  Did  you  do  as  I 
told  you  ? " 

"  Yes,  missee,  Mr.  Clive  in  dlaw- 
ing-loom  now." 

He  went  out,  and  still  Helena 
stared  at  herself  in  the  mirror  with 
angry  terrified  eyes.  After  all,  she 
was  but  a  girl  with  a  woman's  theo 
ries.  What  she  was  determined 
upon  had  seemed  very  easy  and 
picturesque  at  long  range.  She  had 
even  rehearsed  it  mentally  during 
the  past  two  days  ;  but  now  that 
she  was  to  enact  the  role  it  appalled 
her.  She  recalled  several  scenes  of 
the  sort  as  presented  by  the  makers 
of  fiction  (the  canny  and  imaginative 
Frenchman  for  the  most  part),  but 


B  THHbfrl  asun&er,          179 

failed  to  find  spiritual  stamina  in  the 
retrospect. 

"  What  a  fool  !  What  a  fool  !  " 
she  thought.  "  I,  who  have  prided 
myself  that  I  have  a  will  of  iron.  If 
his  first  duty  is  to  me  he  will  stay, 
and  two  people  will  be  happy  instead 
of  miserable.  As  for  Mary  Gordon 
she  will  marry  the  curate  inside  of 
five  years." 

She  retreated  suddenly  to  her 
wardrobe,  and  wrapped  a  broad 
scarf  about  her  shoulders  and  bust, 
then  brought  her  foot  down  and 
went  resolutely  out  into  the  cor 
ridor. 

The  fog  was  banked  in  the  court. 
The  palms  looked  like  the  dissolv 
ing  eidola  of  themselves.  The  in 
visible  fountain  splashed  heavily,  as 
if  oppressed. 

"  I  needed  the  shawl,  after  all," 
she  thought  grimly.  "  A  sneeze 
might  be  fatal. " 

She  walked  rapidly  down  the  cor 
ridor  to  the  drawing-room,  and  with 
out  giving  herself  an  instant  for 
vacillation,  turned  the  knob  and  went 
in.  Then  she  cowered  against  the 


i8o         a  Wbicl  asunDer, 

door  and  would  have  exchanged 
every  hope  she  possessed  for  the 
privilege  of  retreat.  But  Clive  had 
seen  her. 

He  was  standing  by  the  mantel. 
He  looked  his  best,  as  he  always  did 
in  evening  dress.  Even  as  Helena 
wondered  if  the  earth  were  quaking 
beneath  Casa  Norte,  she  was  con 
scious  of  his  remarkable  physical 
beauty.  He  had  his  pipe  in  his  hand. 
It  dropped  suddenly  to  the  mantel 
shelf.  But  he  did  not  go  forward  to 
meet  her. 

"  There  is  something  I  want  to 
say,"  she  gasped,  searching  wildly  for 
inspiration.  "  It  has  occurred  to  me 
that  perhaps  the  reason  you  hesi 
tated  was  my  money.  I  will  give  it 
all  away — to  charity  or  my  aunt.  I 
will  only  keep  a  little,  so  as  not  to  be 
a  burden  to  you.  You  may  think 
this  a  silly,  Quixotic  idea — made  on 
the  impulse  of  the  moment — but  in 
deed  I  would." 

"  I  am  sure  that  you  would.  I 
had  not  thought  of  the  money.  I 
did  not  get  that  far." 

Helena  pressed  her  hands  against 


a  TPQlbtrl  asunder,          181 

the  door  behind  her.  She  felt  an 
impulse  to  laugh  hysterically.  For 
the  life  of  her  she  could  not  remem 
ber  a  detail  that  she  had  rehearsed. 
She  felt  as  if  on  the  edge  of  a  farce- 
comedy.  But  she  would  not  give  up 
the  game. 

"  I  am  so  tired,"  she  said  plain 
tively.  "  I  have  eaten  nothing  since 
I  saw  you,  and  I  have  thought  and 
thought  and  thought  until  I  am  all 
worn  out." 

He  placed  a  chair  at  once. 

"You  poor  little  thing,"  he  said. 
"Let  me  go  to  the  larder  and  see  if 
I  can't  find  you  something " 

"  No  ;  I  don't  want  anything." 

She  sat  down,  holding  the  shawl 
closely  about  her.  Clive  returned  to 
the  mantel. 

"  My  head  ached  so  I  had  to  take 
my  hair  down,"  she  said. 

"  I  wonder  what  is  going  on  in 
your  head  at  the  present  moment." 

"  Don't  you  know  ?" 

"  No.  Why  are  you  such  a  reck 
less  child  ?  You  could  have  seen 
me  in  the  morning." 

"  I  came  here  to  make   it  impos- 


1  32 


sible  for  you  to  marry  Mary  Gor 
don.  I  can't  do  it,  and  I  feel  like  a 
fool." 

He  turned  away  his  head. 

"  I  told  you  before  that  the  role  of 
Delilah  did  not  suit  you.  And  if  it 
did,  couldn't  you  see  that  I  had 
made  up  my  mind  ?  What  sort  of  a 
weakling  -  " 

"  You  didn't  let  me  finish,"  she 
interrupted  him,  blushing  furiously. 
"  I  meant  —  of  course  I  meant  —  that 
I  want  you  to  leave  with  me  for  Eu 
rope  to-morrow  —  we  can  marry  in 
San  Francisco  —  I  must  look  like  a 
Delilah  !  Why  do  the  novelists  and 
dramatists  arrange  these  matters  so 
much  better  than  we  do  ?  —  Oh, 
what  an  idiot  I  am,  anyhow  !  " 

"  Go  back  to  your  room  —  please* 
do." 

"  You  won't  marry  me  to-morrow, 
then  ?  —  good  heavens  !  that  I  should 
propose  to  a  man  !  " 

He  made  no  reply. 

"  I  don't  believe  you  love  me  a 
bit." 

"  Of  course  you  don't.  A  woman 
never  gives  a  man  credit  for  any 


B  "Cabtrl  SsunDer.  183 

decency  of  motive  :  her  theory  is 
that  he  follows  along  the  line  of 
least  resistance.  Well,  I  suppose 
he  does." 

She  dropped  her  face  into  her 
hands. 

"  Oh,  what  shall  I  do  ?  What 
shall  I  do  ?  "  she  said  passionately. 

Clive  brought  his  hand  close 
above  his  own  eyes.  "Will  it  not 
help  you  to  know  that  I  love  you 
unalterably  ? " 

"  Can  a  man  remember  a  woman 
like  that?" 

"There  is  one  woman  in  every 
man's  life  that  he  never  forgets ; 
and  that  woman,  worse  luck,  is 
rarely  his  wife." 

"  It  would  mean  everything  to 
me.  And  I  could  be  true  to  you. 
But  it  doesn't  satisfy  me."  She 
dropped  her  hands  and  stared  at 
him.  "  I  want  you — you.  How  am 
I  to  drag  out  my  life  ?  I  can't  be 
lieve  that  after  to-night  I  shall 
never  see  you  again.  I  can't !  I 
can't !  "  She  stood  up  and  leaned 
against  the  opposite  end  of  the  man 
tel.  "  Do  you  know  one  thing  that 


184          a  'QQlbicl  Haunter. 

keeps  on  hurting  me  through  every 
thing  ?  "  she  asked  after  a  few  mo 
ments.  "  It  is  that  you  suffer  more 
than  I  do,  than  I  am  capable  of  suf 
fering,  and  that  I  cannot  sympathize 
with  you  as  I  want  to  do.  Is  that 
the  reason  that  you  don't  love  me 
well  enough  to  give  up  everything 
else  for  me — that  I  am  not  strong 
enough  to  hold  you  ?  " 

"  Of  course  it  is  not  the  reason. 
If  you  really  love  me — and  I  be 
lieve  you  do — you  will  suffer  enough 
before  you  get  through." 

For  a  while  neither  spoke  again, 
nor  moved.  The  ocean  sounded  as 
if  it  were  under  the  window. 

"  There  is  another  thing,"  she 
said,  finally.  "  I  may  as  well  say  it. 
I  know  that  if  I  had  succeeded  to 
night  I  should  have  been  horribly 
disappointed  in  you.  It  wouldn't 
be  you  any  longer.  For  what  I  love 
in  you  is  your  strength — a  strength 
I  don't  possess.  I'm  glad  I  came 
to-night,  although  I've  made  myself 
ridiculous ;  I  know  both  you  and 
myself  better.  I  can  be  true  to  you 
now ;  I  don't  think  I  could  have 


a  lUbirl  Bsunder.  185 

been  before,  and  I  might  have  done 
reckless  things.  And  perhaps  after 
you  have  gone  and  the  novelty  and 
excitement  have  worn  off,  I  shall 
understand  you  still  better.  That  is 
what  I  shall  live  for.  Promise  me 
that  you  will  believe  that,  and  that 
spiritually  I  shall  never  be  far  from 
you,  and  that  I  am  growing  better 
instead  of  worse." 

"I  don't  need  to  promise."  His 
left  hand  was  still  above  his  eyes. 
Helena  saw  his  right  clench.  She 
went  toward  the  door. 

He  went  forward  to  open  it  for 
her.  As  he  reached  out  his  hand 
for  the  knob  she  struck  it  down  and 
flung  her  arms  about  him. 

"I  can't  go  like  this,"  she  said 
passionately.  "  You  must  kiss  me 
once  more." 

He  caught  her  to  him.  She  saw 
his  eyes  blaze  as  he  bent  his  head, 
and  thought,  as  far  as  she  was  capa 
ble  of  thinking,  that  her  generali 
ties  had  been  correct.  Even  in  the 
rapture  of  the  moment  a  pang 
shot  through  her.  Then  she  found 
herself  on  the  other  side  of  the 


186          a  "Qdbirl  BsunDer* 

door  and  heard  the  key  turn  in  the 
lock. 

She  remembered  only  that  she 
was  hungry  and  tired.  She  went  to 
the  larder,  and  sat  on  a  box  and  ate 
a  plate  of  cold  chicken  and  bread, 
then  went  to  bed  and  slept  soundly. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

NEXT  morning  the  guests  of  Casa 
Norte  were  assembled  in  the  court 
discussing  dive's  departure  and 
waiting  for  the  traps  which  would 
take  them  for  their  accustomed 
drive,  when  Helena,  dressed  in  her 
habit,  came  out  of  her  room  and 
walked  up  to  them. 

"  Mr.  Clive  has  gone,  I  suppose  ?  " 
she  asked. 

"  He  left  a  short  time  ago,"  said 
Miss  Lord.  "  I  am  so  sorry  he  will 
not  return.  Helena,  how  can  you 
be  so  cruel?" 

"You  are  a  hypocrite  and  talking 
rubbish.  I  tried  to  get  him  away 
from  Mary  Gordon,  and  I  lost  the 
game,  and  I  don't  care  in  the  least 
whether  you  know  it  or  not.  I  shall 
not  drive  with  you  this  morning. 
I  am  going  for  a  ride  by  myself  ;  " 
and  she  left  the  house. 


i88          B  Wbtcl 


"  Home,  heaven,  and  mother  !  " 
said  Rollins  with  a  gasp.  "  I  didn't 
think  even  she  would  be  as  game  as 
that.  Well,  I  am  sorry  —  sorry. 
Damn  the  whole  business  of  life, 
anyhow." 

Helena  rode  rapidly  through  the 
forest,  taking  a  short  cut  by  trail  to 
the  fern  grove  above  the  canon. 
She  came  upon  it  after  an  hour's 
hard  riding.  She  noted  that  it  was 
almost  circular  in  form,  irregularly 
outlined  by  the  redwoods.  The 
stiff  and  feather  tops  were  rustling 
in  a  soft  breeze  and  glinted  with  the 
younger  shades  of  green.  She 
thought  that  she  had  never  seen  the 
sky  so  blue,  the  sun  so  golden.  The 
trees  were  singing  high  above.  Oc 
casionally  one  branch  creaked  upon 
another  discordantly. 

She  tethered  her  horse  and  went 
in  among  the  ferns.  When  they 
closed  above  her  head,  and  the  green 
twilight  was  about  her,  she  felt 
gratefully  that  she  was  beyond  the 
eye  of  man,  hidden  even  from  the 
redwoods,  which,  she  had  a  fancy? 
were  human  and  wise. 


B  TKHbtrt  BsunDer.  189 

She  sat  down  on  the  stone  and 
cried.  Tears  did  not  come  easily  to 
her  ;  she  was  not  a  lightly  emotional 
woman.  To-day  she  abandoned 
herself  to  a  passion  of  grief  which 
thrilled  her  nerves  and  cramped  her 
fingers.  It  was  a  passion  which  ac 
cumulated  depth  and  strength  in 
stead  of  dissipating  itself,  and  it  was 
an  hour  before  she  was  exhausted. 
The  storm  brought  no  relief,  as  April 
showers  do  to  most  women.  She 
felt  heavy  and  blunt,  and  knew  that 
the  third  stage  would  be  the  first. 
She  was  conscious  of  one  other  thing 
only  :  that  she  understood  Clive 
better  than  she  had  ever  done  before, 
and  that  her  sympathy  was  as  strong 
for  him  as  for  herself. 

Suddenly  she  sprang  to  her  feet 
and  faced  the  point  of  the  fern- 
wood  where  she  had  made  entrance. 
The  tears  dried  under  the  rush  of 
blood. 

"  Owin  !  "  she  cried.     "  Owin  !  " 

She  strained  her  head  forward, 
then  drew  back  slowly.  There  was 
not  a  sound  in  the  forest.  Her  lips 
fell  apart.  "  Owin  !  "  she  gasped. 


190         B  TKHbirl  BsunDer* 

She  shook  from  head  to  foot.  He 
had  a  quick  strong  step.  She 
heard  it  now  with  a  sub-conscious 
ness  of  which  she  had  never  been 
cognizant  before.  But  it  made  no 
sound  in  her  ears. 

Then  she  sank  back  against  the 
ferns,  bending  them  with  her 
weight,  closing  her  eyes.  The  spir 
itual  part  within  her  seemed  to 
become  clearly  defined.  Something 
touched  and  passed  it.  There  was 
a  moment  of  promise,  rather  than  of 
ecstasy,  then  of  peace. 

She  opened  her  eyes.  "Owin," 
she  whispered.  But  she  was  alone. 

She  went  out  of  the  ferns  and 
mounted  her  horse,  and  rode  rapidly 
homeward.  As  she  turned  the  cor 
ner  of  Casa  Norte  she  heard  the  tel 
ephone  bell  ring  violently.  A 
groom  met  her  and  lifted  her  from 
the  horse.  She  walked  down  the 
garden  toward  the  door.  Her  aunt 
entered  the  office.  Helena  paused 
outside  of  the  window  to  listen  to 
the  ridiculous  one-sided  conversa 
tion  of  the  telephone. 

"  Halloo  ! 


21  Xdbirl  BsunDer,          191 

"  Speak  louder,  please. 

"  A  what  ? 

"  Oh— how  dreadful  ! 

"What?  The  trestle  ?  Are  you 
sure  ?  How  awful  !  How  high  is 
it? 

"  Three  hundred  feet !  Great 
heavens  !  Were  any  lives  lost  ? 

"  Everybody  ?  Oh,  impossible — 
but  of  course — three  hundred  feet. 

"  Only  a  few  passengers — well 
that  is  something." 

"  The  cars  are  on  fire,  you  say. 
Oh,  merciful  heaven  !  " 

"Oh,  I  am  glad.  That  is  one 
blessing,  at  least.  Of  course  they 
were  killed  instantly  on  those  rocks. 

"  Who  ?  What  ?  My  God  !  No  ! 
No  !  Why,  he  was  here  only  this 
morning.  It's  impossible  !  Impos 
sible! 

"Oh!" 

Mrs.  Cartright  staggered  to  her 
feet,  her  face  appearing  before  the 
open  window.  Her  jaw  was  fallen, 
her  skin  the  color  of  dough.  She 
saw  Helena. 

"  Oh  !  "  she  gasped.  "  What— 
what  do  you  think  has  happened  ?  " 


192         B  THUbirl  BeunDer. 

"  What  ? " 

"  The  train  went  over  the  trestle 
by  Jo  Bagley's — three  hundred  feet 
— burnt  up.  And  Mr.  Clive — isn't 
it  awful  that  I  should  have  spoken 
to  him  not  three  hours  ago  ? — was 
on  it.  Jo  Bagley  says  he  spoke  to 
him  when  the  train  stopped.  Oh, 
Helena  Belmont,  how  can  you  look 
so  indifferent ! " 

Helena  turned  and  went  back 
into  the  forest. 

THE    END. 


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